


Whether By Accident Or By Design

by crookedswingset



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: AU (College) Sexual Content, AU (My Hero Academia), Angst, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Happy Ending, M/M, Manipulation, No Prior Knowledge of My Hero Academia Required, Past Harry/Peter, Peter almost gets eaten, Politics, Prejudice, Quirks, Secret Identity, Secret Police (sort of), Snooping, Symbiotes - Freeform, Temporary Major Character Death (Wade), Violence, Violence On Campus, Wade DOES get eaten (sort of), side Ned/Betty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:53:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 189,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29762685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedswingset/pseuds/crookedswingset
Summary: Peter is about to graduate college and become an officially licensed Pro Hero. Too bad he’s already burnt out. Years of operating as an illegal vigilante with a supposedly subpar Quirk will do that to you.  But just as he’s about to quit altogether, he meets actual Pro Hero Deadpool, a reformed villain who works hard to make sure others don’t follow in his footsteps. The thing is? Wade’s just as jaded as he is, and he has completely given up on making things better.As their relationship deepens, Peter realizes he is not quite ready to give up on being a Pro Hero, a resolve that is tested when a new Pro Hero agency comes to town and takes over. The so-called “Guard” is a group of four eight-foot men with eerily similar Quirks—and they have no intention of making nice with New York City’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Relationships: Betty Brant/Ned Leeds, Peter Parker & Betty Brant, Peter Parker & Michelle Jones, Peter Parker & Ned Leeds, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 24
Kudos: 81
Collections: Spideypool Big Bang - The 2020 Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey readers! Would you believe me if I said this was supposed to be a short one?! (I cannot be trusted.)
> 
> Anyway, I would like to thank thelonebamf for the amazing art that was created for this fic, and also all of the early validation that carried me through the first frustrating draft of this. Bamf, you live up to your name! And what cool, comic-inspired art! Thank you so, so much. I enjoyed working with you. I'd also like to thank riseofthefallenone for her sacrifice as a beta. Not only did I get to beta her adorable Pomeranian Spideypool fic myself (Puppy Ex Machina, check it out!), she also did a toooon of work whipping this into shape. And so quickly too! It was not easy. The final draft was over 400 pages! Pour one out for her. All remaining errors are my own.
> 
> Anyway, this fic would not be here if not for these two awesome individuals. Give them some love, please. 
> 
> Lastly, mind the tags! This work is definitely a product of the year it was written in, and so, it deals with some frustrating topics. I do, however, guarantee you that there is a happy ending. :)
> 
> Happy reading!

Check out the rest of thelonebamf's [art post here](https://amazing-spiderling.tumblr.com/post/644400678040666112/spideypool-big-band-2020-art-masterpost-title)! 

-

Otto Octavius was many things. An award-winning chemist. A Nobel Prize-nominated inventor. And, perhaps most importantly, a longtime friend to the Parker family.

But what he wasn’t was a man who stammered. Prevaricated. Deflected.

No, he was a man who filled lecture halls with hours and hours of content. He was a man with the unique skill of filibustering on almost any topic, so huge was his breadth of knowledge. He was a man who thought quickly and spoke smoothly, beautifully, translating his thoughts into speech effortlessly. He was a natural orator, the perfect center of attention, the ideal man to choose for an impromptu presentation. He didn’t _stammer_.

But he was stammering now. Stuttering. Stumbling. Uhs and ums filled the air. He scratched the back of his neck. He looked up to the ceiling. There were a couple of false starts and juggled tools, and it was painful to watch.

Painful to see such a well-spoken man trying to tell Peter Parker anything but the unvarnished truth out of fear of hurting the son of some of his closest friends.

In the end, Otto finally sighed, shoulders drooping into his custom lab coat. His many appendages—some unadorned and startlingly flesh-like, others equipped with metal braces and glowing diodes—followed suit, making the man give off the impression of a very depressed octopus.

“You know, bud,” Otto said, “no matter which way you slice it? It doesn’t look good.”

“I was worried you were going to say that, sir,” Peter replied. He looked up at the fluorescent lighting of Otto’s lab until the glow made his sensitive eyes throb. He didn’t blame Otto for his response—the actual feedback or the hesitant stalling. There was no way Otto knew today that he’d have to give life advice to a 22-year-old acquaintance who had already hitched his wagon to “being a pro Hero.” Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean these days.

In any case, “don’t quit college” was advice he should have expected from a lifelong academic like Otto Octavius.

But Otto went to a _normal_ school, the one where superpowers weren’t the main focus of the curriculum. Peter, on the other hand, went to ESU, and Empire State University of Quirk and Societal Advancement was very far from an ordinary college—and its students were far from ordinary people.

The first Quirk appeared in China in a newborn baby. This baby had the ability to emanate light from its body. Attempts by the world to squash this story as a hoax fell apart quickly as more and more people began to manifest powers on their own. The cause of these Quirks—initially called Meta Abilities or mutations—was never fully explained. Nevertheless, the impact of these new powers was transformative.

And destructive, especially in the hands of amoral people who had been suddenly empowered with abilities that no police force or military response could match.

Governments were toppled. Banks were raided. Nations disappeared. People died. This chaos and unrest grew from small hot spots to raging wildfires, largely due to the focused efforts of the international criminal empires that had formed specifically for this purpose. One such organization that especially impacted American politics was HYDRA. Though it was of European origins, HYDRA had America in sight as an ideal expansion target, and it spent most of the twenties and thirties sliding its way through the backdoors of US leaders and decision makers, slowly bending their ears until they too were of HYDRA.

Not that this stopped America from clashing with HYDRA in WWII. While the US government largely condemned private citizens using their Quirks against the Quirk empowered criminals who were ransacking cities, towns, and neighborhoods, it was throwing millions and millions of dollars at recruiting, training, and enhancing strongly Quirked soldiers for its overseas campaign.

New York’s very own Captain America was one of them. Despite their best attempts to market Steve Rogers in their own favor, Rogers had more in common with the so-called “vigilantes” back home. According to the off-the-cuff folklore told by WWII hero, Dum Dum Dugan, Steve Rogers walked out of a highly anticipated USO show, hopped on a plane, and dropped out on top of a HYDRA base with nothing but stolen Army fatigues and a shield.

It was a daring act that many military leaders had denied previously because it would have been a complete suicide mission for whatever regiment, battalion, or company was chosen, and they were already losing too many men.

But Captain America went in as one man and came out, unscathed, with hundreds of captured US and Allied Forces soldiers. The watching vigilantes of the world—both at home and in Europe—were enthralled.

After that, Captain America pulled together the Howling Commandos and made a nuisance of himself all around Europe, toppling HYDRA bases, rescuing citizens, and literally redrawing the lines of war. It was this image of Captain America—honorable, decisive, and relentless—that burned itself on the US psyche as the ideal “Hero”.

Captain America would die eventually, plunging a plane into the ocean as he eliminated one of the many heads of HYDRA, but this only added fuel to the fire of vigilantes back home. Using the Howling Commandos as an example, they started forming their own groups and tackling problem elements at home. Smaller criminal alliances, having grown lazy and over-confident because of years of citizen fear (and what was essentially a state-enabled existence), were toppled almost immediately. Larger alliances met similar fates, one by one.

These vigilante alliances steadily gained prominence and acceptance by the early sixties. Basically the prototype for today’s Pro Hero Agencies, these groups challenged state, federal, and local governments to take responsibility for the unrest of previous decades. This prompted them to invest and establish something of a formalized structure of responses to Quirk-related incidents—and the vigilante groups, by then known as Professional or Pro Heroes, formed the basis of those responses. 

And places like ESU were designed to shape the futures of those who wanted to use their Quirk for the betterment of society. While not the powerhouse that UA High School was in Japan, ESU was a rising star in the world of American Pro Heroes. The small school accepted only one hundred students a year, and their whole business model was about educating and uplifting the future Heroes of the world.

Despite his complicated history with his own Quirk, Peter had been thrilled to be accepted. Astounded, really. So sure that this was a sign from the universe that he was meant to save lives. But now he was knee deep in year four of a four-year curriculum, and he hated it with a passion.

He said as much to Otto then, who chuckled.

“Ah yes. You’ve been exposed to the ugly truth of American Pro Hero Society, haven’t you?” He turned away from Peter, all eight of his limbs rising into the air. “Might is right, cash is king, and power is _everything_.”

Peter grumbled at that, staring at his shoes. Too much of Pro Hero Society was defined by one of two things. The first thing was the power and value of a person’s Quirk. While it made sense that certain Quirks were better applied to specific scenarios, the US had gone a step further than other countries, assigning a class in addition to a description when a child received their first formal Quirk assessment at the age of 12.

If your Quirk was powerful or valuable, you were labeled a Hero. If you were anything else… you were a sidekick. A “Hero Support”.

Peter was one of many who were branded second fiddle in this classification system. No redos. No take backs. No exceptions. Unless you were rich.

“It’s just the way things are, Pete. Why don’t you go in and get a Quirk reassessment? Slide some Benjamins across the table, and they’ll have your Quirk repackaged in no time. Your school might even accept it. They’re hungry for Hero Track students.”

Peter made a face at that. Money. The second overarching problem with Pro Hero Society. The deeper your wallet, the farther you could stretch even an underwhelming Quirk to full Hero Status. And being branded Hero over Hero Support wasn’t a matter of simple pride. It was economics. A Hero made $5 to every $1 that a Hero Support made on average—because according to most, Heroes were the ones doing the “real” work.

“Gotta spend money to make money.”

“It shouldn’t work that way, sir,” Peter countered quickly.

Otto turned back around, smiling sheepishly. “Principles are great, Pete, until they aren’t.” His many limbs began to unload pieces of one of his current projects onto the table between them. Once they were all deposited, he paused. “At the very least, you should embrace your Quirk. I have!” He shook his head. “It’s been forever and a day. I can’t believe they defunded Quirk counseling.”

There was nothing wrong with Peter’s Quirk. What was wrong—and desperately needed fixing—was Hero society itself. It wasn’t right that so many people with fascinating and helpful Quirks were made into glorified secretaries and assistants if they went the Pro Hero route. This pattern of poor treatment and devaluing was why Hero Supports dropped out of the career at an alarming rate. But, of course, that dropout rate was frequently used as an example of why Hero Supports weren’t as vital as Heroes themselves. Never mind that the success of many missions laid solely in the hands of those branded with a measly S on their Quirk Assessment.

God forbid anyone should challenge the status quo.

“If I was so peeved about my Quirk, I’d cash in a coupon for Quirk enhancement.”

Otto grimaced. “I’m all about cutting edge science, but, uh… that’s a little too cutting edge, if you catch my drift.”

Peter started to ask how something that was paraded out in the forties was still considered “cutting edge”. But then he promptly closed his mouth shut.

There was a reason why Steve Rogers was treated as an anomaly amongst anomalies, the only surviving subject of a failed US experiment. Quick enhancement was dangerous and deadly. Every think piece and science article that opined on Rogers’ controversial treatment agreed that Quirk enhancement should have been virtually impossible with World War II science. Only the recent emergence—and treatment and assimilation—of the Winter Soldier put to bed some of the wackier theories about aliens, as well as the jaded ones about government cover ups.

Not that the recent return of Captain Marvel helped with conspiracy theories. Or the aliens. (She liked freaking out people about the aliens.)

A hand landed on Peter’s shoulder—human shaped and warm. Peter looked up, exhausted, at Otto’s smile. “You’re so close to graduation, Peter. Don’t give up now.”

“If I graduate, I owe them three years of service after school’s over.”

“And those three years will pass in a blink of an eye,” Otto assured him, squeezing his shoulder. “Then, if you really still hate it, you can quit.”

“Going and finishing school for something I know I’m not going to commit to… It feels like that would be worse than quitting right now.”

“Don’t think of it like that. Many people try out careers that aren’t suited for them. What matters is that you tried and you gave it an honest effort.” Peter ducked his head, hearing his father’s voice echo in Otto’s wording. Richard Parker had always taken honesty very seriously. “If young Miss Jones doesn’t co-opt you for an underground newspaper or the like, know that I will always have a place for you in my labs.” Peter’s head shot up at this. At his visible shock, Otto grinned. “I’d take you over any traditionally educated lab assistant in the whole world.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

“Just… hang in there, bud.” Otto shrugged. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll find something with this that will make you want to stay after all.”

Peter doubted it. He strongly doubted it.

Otto cleared his throat, then waved a limb at the table and his disassembled project. “Now, about this energy loss issue I’ve been having… the client says it's unreasonable. The energy needed to operate the prosthesis, I mean. It would require a bigger and heavier battery, which would severely impact their quality of life.”

“I see,” Peter said, stepping up to the side of the table. He looked over the pieces curiously. Most of Otto’s projects were a mix of engineering and biology, and he’d recently landed several contracts designing artificial limbs and other structures to help people regain mobility. Each client was a separate challenge, and Otto had risen to every one of them. He’d even gained some recent positive press over the system he was able to make for George Tarleton, a technician whose late Quirk expression led to a massively overdeveloped head much larger than the rest of his otherwise normal human body.

The current project seemed simpler but also more complex. If he was reading the schematic on the white board correctly, the prosthesis was designed to be fused to the client’s spine and brain stem. He hoped Otto knew what he was doing.

Oblivious to Peter’s distraction, Otto was still talking rapidly about his project. “-and, you must know, I agree. The calculations _do not_ match the energy usages needed to fully use the prosthesis. I’ve taken it apart and put it back together so many times. Where is the lost energy going?”

“Have you considered friction?”

“ _Of course I have_ ,” Otto said impatiently, his frustration apparent. He jabbed a hand at the white board with the scribbled schematics. He tapped every red circle with an extended limb and with enough force to make the board rattle. He looked back at Peter. “I’ve calculated _every single_ point in the design where the moving parts will hit resistance. I’ve done it a hundred times over, and if I can’t figure it out, I have to scrap the project and start from step one.” He cupped his own chin, muttering down at the table. “It has to be something else, something I can’t see-”

“I’m looking at your design too, though.” Peter interrupted. He walked up to the board frowning. “If the circles are every place of friction, then I see at least three more problem areas you haven’t calculated just yet.”

“Where?” Otto demanded, mirroring him and glaring at the board.

Peter half-turned to Otto. “The client, sir.”

Otto stared at Peter. Then he looked at the design. Then he groaned, covering his face with all eight limbs. “Of course. The _client_.” The last word was given at least four more syllables than strictly necessary. Otto sounded embarrassed.

Peter tried not to grin too obviously. “Are you sure you don’t want me to quit school yet and come work for you?”

A stray limb swatted at Peter’s knee. “Don’t tempt me.”

Peter just laughed.

-

The weather was nice.

The temperature was in the low eighties and the skies were clear. There was just enough sun coverage in the quad for Peter to tip back into the fading grass. His backpack was an uncomfortable but acceptable pillow. The sun was warm, and Peter was deeply, deeply tired.

He’d just about fallen asleep when dirt and dying grass crunched too close for his danger sense to ignore. He swam out of his nap groggily, yawning and stretching as someone dropped down next to him, companionably leaning against their own backpack for their own support.

“How was your chat with the coolest person you know?” Ned Leeds demanded excitedly. He said hello not with his mouth but with his hands, which tangled with Peter’s in a crude variation of an almost decade-old secret handshake.

Peter yawned again, eyeing his best friend under heavy lids. “One-sided conversations are awkward. But, hey, I brought a mirror this time-”

“Haha,” was all Ned said to that before shifting and pulling his backpack out from under him. He mumbled a small whoops before dumping it out between his knees.

Peter liked to think of himself as a tinkerer, but Ned was in a whole other league. Much like Otto, really. He’d always thought Ned and Otto would get along great, if not for one important distinction between them.

Otto was about radically advancing human experience, and he wasn’t afraid to dip his toes into biology or neurology to do it. Ned, on the other hand, was just interested in technology.

It didn’t help that he had a soft heart for things in pain. He’d cried for twenty minutes when they had to dissect a fetal pig in high school, and the thing was already dead. He’d fainted in his freshman college Anatomy course, and he nearly failed First Aid and Recovery when the professor asked him to imagine Peter with a fractured arm. They’d both been yelled at for that, Peter remembered, as Hero Supports were expected to act as the first and second line of emergency response when EMTs and medics couldn’t reach the site. They’d had to redo their exam the next day, and they passed with flying colors, mostly because Ned, in all his bullheaded glory, stayed up all night creating triage, communication, and basic treatment bots that ran autonomously and could be coordinated through a smart phone app.

Peter liked Ned’s Quirk and what he did with it. His inventions always worked. They didn’t always work the way Ned intended them to, but that was half the fun.

Officially, Ned’s Quirk was tech-genius, but Peter always privately thought Ned’s Quirk was more about epiphanies and insight. For as long as Peter had known him, Ned had always been capable of brilliant leaps in logic, of extraordinary inspiration.

It was just a coincidence that Ned’s nose had been buried in tech since he was four years old and that his fixation had been enabled by a pre-high school education experience focused on STEM over all else. Of course his Quirk looked tech-related in that context.

Then again, that hardly mattered. Ned’s family had more money than Peter and May, but not the kind of money where they would have been comfortable ponying up for a Quirk reassessment. Especially since it was clear to everyone involved that no assessment, no matter how favorable, was going to change the mark on Ned’s ID from an S to an H. After all, no one cared to examine the Quirks of future sidekicks.

Ned, oblivious to Peter’s thoughts, picked up a small gizmo, and started prying off its outer body with his fingernails. “Did Doc Ock say anything about exciting projects?”

Otto’s current project was under an NDA. Not that Peter had signed anything himself, but… “We mostly talked about me.”

“Psh. That’s boring.”

“Thanks!”

“And you hate talking about you,” Ned continued. He looked up from his little invention, eyebrows furrowed together. “What was the topic?”

Something like guilt twisted inside of Peter. “Well…”

Before Peter could answer, a bookbag landed in the grass next to him, nearly clipping his knee. A body followed—a familiar one, one that of Michelle Jones. She faceplanted in the grass next to him. After ten seconds of stillness, she shifted, laying on her side with her head braced up by her hand.

“So what did Dr. Octavius say about quitting Hero school?” she asked bluntly. Blunter than Peter would have liked.

Thanks, MJ. So much for breaking it to Ned gently.

“ _What?_ ” Ned immediately started sputtering. “Quitting Hero school?” Peter winced. Ned was starting to turn a dangerous red. “Are you out of your freaking mind? You have less than a year left, Peter!”

If this was a preview of the conversation Peter was going to have with Aunt May, he was already doomed. “Well-”

MJ idly blew a blade of grass out of her hair. “Support Track sucks, and you know it.”

Visibly flustered, Ned said, “There’s- there’s nothing wrong with contributing to the greater good of an agency! Somebody’s gotta do the work-”

MJ yawned, rolling onto her back. “Well, if my internship was any sort of omen of how that nonsense is supposed to work, I might as well quit and become a barista. Saving a person’s day, one morning at a time.”

On one side of Peter, Ned muttered something uncharitable under his breath. On the other side, MJ just smirked, looking up at the sky. It was always like this with them, ever since high school. Ned wanted to tread the straight and narrow, the prescribed path. MJ, on the other hand, questioned everything, especially when it was prescribed or expected or said to be the “way things are done”.

And that attitude hadn’t left when she was recruited for ESU to join their Hero Track—a true feat, considering no one really knew what MJ’s Quirk was. She never used it and was so obstinate about it, they dropped her from Hero Track into Support Track a week into freshman year as punishment. Little did they know, that was exactly where she wanted to be.

And the demotion, as it were, was probably for the best. She would have failed out by now if she wasn’t with Peter and Ned. Support Track was about 90% theory and 10% practical Quirk work. Even the internships that were mandatory for Hero Track were merely extra credits for them. And because they were Support Track, the internships themselves…

Well, they weren’t great.

Peter personally didn’t learn anything he didn’t already know. He had spent the majority of his weeklong internship filing paperwork for the Fantastic Four. They were kind and kept him well fed, but Reed Richards had completely forgotten he’d signed up for interns in the first place, and Ben Grimm never got his name right. Sue Storm wrote him a glowing letter of recommendation, of course, but it felt hollow.

But MJ was right. Peter had been just as spooked by his internship as she was. If this was what being a sidekick (or a “Hero Support”) was about, then… then what was the point? Peter didn’t inherit these powers to answer phones all day and organize other people’s calendars. He had a calling. And school was doing nothing but stifle that calling. But better he figure that out now than later, armed with a license and a mandated service requirement, right?

Otto didn’t seem to think so. Neither did Ned. And nor would Aunt May. Ugh.

Ned jarred him out of his thoughts by suddenly leaning over him. “Why do you smell like cheese?” Ned said flatly, nose twitching. Peter side-eyed MJ but said nothing. “And why do you have marinara on your face? And pineapple on your shirt. And olives on your backpack.” Ned sucked in a breath suddenly. “Oh my god, MJ. Did someone throw pizza at you?”

MJ nodded grandly. “You’ve done it again, Mr. Holmes,” she said in a deep, British accent.

Peter suppressed his smile. Ned’s Quirk in full swing was a beautiful thing. Even when it engaged over the silliest things.

Ned looked far less amused. “MJ. No one should be throwing food at you.”

“It’s okay. I’m tough, Mom.”

“Is this about the answer key scandal in Hero Track?” Peter asked.

MJ’s attention flickered over to Peter. Her half-exasperated, half-fond expression melted into something a little more unsettling—a wide, toothy smile normally seen only in the “bullpen” of their school newspaper’s office. Ned, who wasn’t part of the newspaper with them, sat back at the sight of it, rightfully afraid.

“I got called in by Dr. McCoy,” she said gleefully, looking too pleased to have had an intense and serious conversation with the school’s president. “Got grilled on my sources. Interrogated about my claims. And, somehow, my ass is on the chopping block for ‘not keeping the school’s optics in mind’ and ‘withholding vital information from the administration’. Tch. Please.” Peter opened his mouth, but MJ raised a hand, stopping him. “You can have your ‘I told you so’ moment when I get expelled, and not a second sooner.” She tossed her dark—and, yes, marinara-ed—hair over her shoulder. “Anyway, I’m in the hot seat, but so is Dr. Hall. Sucks to suck, doesn’t it!”

Peter winced. Dr. Franklin Hall ran half of the practical courses at ESU. While he mostly designed and implemented the courses for Hero Track, he also led the annual survival and/or natural disaster course held for Support Track—basically the only class that gave Support Track a taste of what it was like to be an actual Pro Hero. What a loss.

Then again, Dr. Hall shouldn’t have been giving answer keys out to his Hero Track students. It was blatant favoritism, but not exactly unexpected. It was Hero Track, after all.

MJ plucked a smushed pineapple from where it was crammed in the crease of her sleeve. “So our friends in Hero Track aren’t very happy with me right now. This was a gift from a troglodyte who’s angry that I stole his sweet free ride and ran it into a lake.” She flicked the fruit away. Her expression was clearly that of a person who didn’t mind being Public Enemy Number 1. “So, I should probably make a decision now, right? What were Dr. Octavius’ words of wisdom?”

“Quitting is bad,” Peter reported dutifully. “And it doesn’t look good under any circumstances.”

MJ deflated. “What, are you kidding me?” she blurted out, looking disappointed. “What if the alternative is being expelled?”

“You’re not going to get expelled,” Ned interjected, frowning. “McCoy’s pretty reasonable. Besides, maybe a lot of people didn’t read it…?”

“It’s a front-page article, Ned,” MJ said, eyeing him. “And thanks ever so much for clearly keeping up with our paper. Peter and I put our blood, sweat, and tears into it.”

“Hey, I subscribed,” Ned defended himself.

“Hm.” MJ leaned towards Peter conspiringly. “Straight to spam.”

Peter snorted. “If the school doesn’t support us and our best friend doesn’t even read us, why continue on? Let’s just quit right now.”

“The Academic Affairs office should still be open,” MJ said slyly. Moments like this were why he liked MJ so much.

Ned groaned, slumping over. “You’re hardcore stressing me out right now. This is your future we’re talking about. Why are you two so-”

His little gizmo suddenly jumped out of his hands, landing on the grass. It laid there for a moment, its body a mess of glowing and blinking LEDs. Then it rolled over unprompted, lifting itself up on stubby levers like they were its arms. It flipped over again before letting out a long N sound.

“…holy shit,” Ned said quietly. “Um. I gotta go!”

“Where to?” Peter asked, watching Ned dive for the little thing to pick it up.

“Yeah, don’t leave,” MJ said seriously. “We were just messing with you.”

Ned stood, his hand cupped over his project protectively. The little gizmo, far from shushed, started letting out an extended E sound. “I gotta go,” he repeated. “I’m meeting someone.” He went back to his backpack and shoved the rest of its contents back inside the bag.

The exception was the weirdly vocal gizmo, which kept idly flipping in his palm. That thing, he kept loosely grasped in his left hand. The metal wings or arms on the little project kept flapping up and down. The noise out of it changed again to mimic a hard D sound. N. E. D.

Weird.

“Someone?” MJ asked, sitting up. “Are you breaking up with us? I know Peter’s a flake, but I thought you and I had something special-”

“What? No. There’s a girl,” Ned said absently. Hearing himself, he flinched. Then, weirdly, he put his hand over the top of his little invention, as if covering its ears. “Uh, a friend! A girl who is a friend.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder before blurting, again, “Gotta go!”

He took off running. Also weird.

Peter looked at MJ, satisfied that he wasn’t the only one who was suspicious. She was squinting after Ned too. Then she was shrugging, lying back down again as she pulled a piece of an olive out of her hair. Her fingers were ink stained, and, now that Ned was gone, she was no longer as gleeful about that day’s happenings. She looked tired.

Well, she always looked tired, and today couldn’t have helped. But that was how MJ always was—she led from the front. It would have been so easy for her to deflect the lead to someone else. It would have been so easy for her to have her cake and eat it too, to set up another writer to pitch and publish the story—and later fall as the scapegoat.

She ran her paper like a machine, but she never pushed anyone harder than she pushed herself—and she never put anyone’s name on something that was going to get them in trouble.

As the photographer, Peter wasn’t involved in every single pitch meeting, but he wasn’t surprised she’d gotten a whiff of that controversy and chose to be the one who ran with it. If anyone was going to get expelled over the articles they published, she would rather it be her.

Of course, it would have been much, much easier for her to ignore the lead entirely, like other editors would have. But the hidden truth was like catnip to MJ. She couldn’t ignore it. Maybe that was her Quirk.

“Ever get the feeling you’re a minor character in your best friend’s story?”

MJ looked at him solemnly for a moment before shooting him a crooked smile. “Keep up, Parker,” was all she said.

Peter rolled his eyes and laid back down, looking up at the school buildings around them. In the distance, a bell rang. Doors to a lecture hall opened. Rubber soles squeaked against shiny floors. Voices rose and rose, darting from conversations about free time to dire predictions about finals. Peter breathed and tried to imagine a version of himself that wasn’t tempted to quit this place.

He couldn’t.

ESU’s motto was “Be More. Be Better.” They respected and encouraged a lot of things from their students. Audaciousness. Innovation. Genius. Bravery. Pure nerviness.

What they didn’t encourage was people like Spider-Man.

-

A few days later, Peter got the back of his head slapped. The attack was both dreaded and expected. He let it happen, rocking his head forward obligingly.

It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were the days he shared an Ethical Consideration for Responsible Public Service class with Eugene “Flash” Thompson. Most people weren’t lucky enough to have their friends follow them to college. Peter was lucky enough to have both his closest friends _and_ his longtime bully.

So yeah. He got his head slapped a lot in this class.

“What’s up, losers?” Flash crowed. He slammed his ID on Peter’s desk. “Look who’s been elevated. Jealous, Sticky Boy?”

Flash was gloating. Clear as day, the dreaded red S on his driver’s license had been changed to a blue H.

“Oh,” MJ said, leaning on Peter’s desk. She looked at it carefully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Flash preened.

“How much did your dad pay this time?” Peter asked, actually curious. The prices of Quirk reassessments varied by thousands of dollars.

Flash flushed, his eyebrows slamming down. “For the last time, dill weed, my dad didn’t fake my Quirk. It was a filing error.”

Peter thought better of saying anything else. Flash Thompson was the only person he knew who’d had his Quirk reassessed not once, not twice, but three separate times—all without changing him elevating him to a Hero class.

What changed this time? More money? Flash’s Quirk wasn’t, well, flashy. It had something to do with animal mimicry, but Peter had never seen him do anything more complicated with it than copying a snake’s forked tongue and mimicking the cry of a small kitten.

MJ pulled out a small notepad from her pocket. Flash turned to her eagerly. “Would you like to make a statement to the paper? I’m sure we could squeeze you in on the second page.”

Flash was appalled. “Second page! I’m worth more than that, especially to the paper.”

Peter didn’t know why Flash thought he’d get special treatment. He worked on the paper too. He knew what MJ was like.

“Oh. Perhaps we can do a two-page spread instead.”

“Yes!” Flash said immediately, eyes glittering.

“An exploration of the intersection of income, class, and Quirk status, and how rich boys with rich daddies poison the well of future pro-Heroes by throwing their money at the problem. You could be our subject matter expert.” During the course of those two drawled sentences, Flash went from ecstatic to nauseated. From jubilant to subdued—and not a little afraid. “It’s a fascinating topic, don’t you agree? Just a thought. What do you think?”

Flash was silent. Then, after a beat, he turned away, marching to his desk. “…No comment.”

MJ laughed almost soundlessly behind Peter. Then, worryingly, came the sound of a pen scratching against the surface of her notepad. Peter whipped around to face her.

MJ snorted. “Relax, tiger. I’m not writing two sentences on Flash. Let alone two pages.”

Peter hoped not. The last time Flash got in the paper, he’d made Peter take 500 pictures of him before he settled on one he tolerated. Then, under the guise of double-checking sources, he took the final draft of the story with him over the weekend. But all he did, apparently, was photoshop his picture to oblivion. That poreless monstrosity with its impossible musculature and its stolen teeth somehow made it to print and required a correction to be sent out a day later.

Privately, MJ told Peter that the decision to push it through had been worth the lecture she’d gotten from their paper’s faculty advisor, Wanda Maximoff. Flash himself was subjected to a much longer conversation about when and how to use Photoshop—and when and how to identify body image issues within himself.

“Give him this,” Peter said simply. He looked away from her to where Flash had set up camp near the door. “He’s probably been waiting a week to rub this in our faces.” Sure enough, Flash had his ID facing up on the corner of his desk, loudly asking passing Hero Track students if the font for their shared statuses had changed recently or if that was just him. 

“If anyone should get their quirk reassessed, it’s you,” MJ mumbled. She had her arms folded on the table now and had tilted her cheek into the crook of it.

“Maybe I’ll set up a GoFundMe.” Peter tracked the entrance of the teacher idly, opening up his spiral notebook. “Until then, I’ll just be your friend, uh, Admiral Adhesive.”

MJ snickered. “No one’s going to let a sidekick be named Admiral.”

“Hey, no one asked you,” Peter said, starting to turn around.

“Class has _started_ ,” said the professor pointedly. Peter sat up straight and looked forward. The man at the front of the room swept his gaze across the newly hushed students before shrugging and taking off his sunglasses. “…is something I would say if I was a hardass. So. Anything interesting happen over the weekend?”

Overlapping voices interrupted the hush of the room as students rushed to fill in Quentin Beck.

Beck was a favorite amongst the student body. A handsome man, he was the third youngest teacher at ESU after the Maximoff twins. He was confident and knowledgeable in many things—just usually not their specific curriculum. He was known for lax discipline and also for giving out better grades if people asked for it. On top of that, because of his prolific Pro Hero career, he had gained an almost celebrity status that most of their teachers actively avoided.

Most of that was because he’d been big on the international scene, making a name for himself across many countries by battling monsters and Quirk criminal empires that, before he arrived, no one even knew existed. He’d received so many accolades and awards and honorary degrees from the citizens he had saved, but he never stayed anywhere for very long, as he was a targeted man. Many Heroes across countries empathized with him and tried to help and protect him, but only Quentin Beck seemed to be able to outsmart and outrun the things following him.

Then his knee blew out, forcing his retirement. Despite the early end to a promising career, Beck had confided in his class that he was grateful for it. Since his teenage years, he’d been pursued by interdimensional beings who were trying to kill him. He believed that, as elemental beings themselves, they were drawn to his unusual Quirk of element bending.

They stopped chasing him when Beck, newly injured, accepted Dr. McCoy’s offer to teach at ESU. Beck always said he couldn’t speculate why the beings had stopped following him, as his Quirk was fully intact, but only that it must have been the concentrated opposition that would come from the faculty and the students that finally scared his enemies away. He could—and would—finally known peace.

So Beck? Extremely well liked for his past, but it was his present that drew people in. He was a very engaging person. He had a perspective on everything and everyone, and he never failed to pull out his endless catalogue of stories about his adventures when the time called for it. He was a mysterious figure to the students, introspective and brooding at times, but Peter’s classmates always claimed that, of all the faculty, Beck was the only one who really ever listened.

As he was now, sipping on a green drink as three boys in front gave him a play-by-play of an intramural soccer match.

Time ticked on. Peter found himself looking at his watch. Once, twice, three times. The idle chatter continued. Behind him, MJ’s breath slowed into the rhythm of true sleep. Meanwhile, Beck asked a student to clarify about a vague statement he’d made about his hometown. The kid lit up at the chance to share and started talking a mile a minute.

And Peter found himself staring out the window, teeth gritted. As heroic and nice and—yes—handsome as Beck was, this here? This was why he didn’t like Beck.

He didn’t like Beck one bit.

Beck was one of a small handful of teachers who taught Support Track and Hero Track. This class itself was mixed. And while Beck never differentiated between students over their status—or made students sit in rows or sides of the room that corresponded with that fact—he was ultimately wasting their time. Maybe Hero Track could afford to goof off in class once in a while, but Support Track, buried as ever in readings and hypotheticals, needed every bit of time they could squeeze out of a former frontline Pro Hero.

Peter would have much rather Beck talked about himself for an hour and 45 minutes than entertain a 20-minute chat about everyone’s past weekend exploits. Peter would have learned more from Beck rehashing that time he almost drowned in Italy than this nonsense.

But, if he was truthful, there was actually a lot to dislike about Beck, even beyond this. For starters, he wasn’t a very good teacher. He had very little rigor compared to their other professors. It was transparent and obvious that he took exam questions right out of the book every time. He could be easily convinced to abandon the lecture for the day. And, in the three years Peter had had him as a professor, he never once stopped using trivia tidbits from his heroic past as extra credit on his exams. This struck Peter as uniquely narcissistic—and an entirely bad example to set for everyone on Hero Track, who already bragged enough as is.

“Speaking of sharing information with the world, Miss Jones! I heard you had an interesting weekend.”

Sometime in the last five minutes, MJ’s breathing had changed, so Peter didn’t bother drawing attention to her. She was awake already, and, besides, she sat behind him for a reason. He was pretty sure she was using his body as a shield in classes like this to catch a little shut eye.

“…Sure,” she offered, the word a little garbled.

“Can I talk to you outside of class?” Beck asked, still smiling.

“Can’t,” MJ replied shortly.

That smile wavered slightly, not quite reaching his eyes. Then a student raised their hand, asking about what place he remembered the best from his stint as an international Pro Hero.

Thus distracted, Beck’s expression became wistful and nostalgic. “Ah yes. Italy.”

As Beck started to recount his experience in that country, Peter fought the urge to bang his head against the table. Instead, he drew spiderwebs on his notebook and waited for the class to end.


	2. Chapter 2

The woman with the cat Quirk was followed for four blocks before her pursuer caught up to her.

It was fully and truly night, light pollution blocking out every bit of natural brightness from the dark sky. Flickering neon signs and dim streetlamps failed to chase away the shadows. The sidewalks were almost empty, and those who walked them kept their heads down. The woman stood out like a sore thumb, face up and expression unguarded. She lacked any emblem or patch that identified her as a Pro Hero. Nor did she wear a weapon, as many Pro Heroes—and villains and vigilantes—did openly. She must have seemed like any easy target.

It happened in a split second, almost too quick to catch.

She got dragged into an alleyway by her pursuer, hauled and almost thrown deeper into it. Her stalker brandished a glowing blue knife at her and made demands. She smartly surrendered her purse immediately and backed off, hands raised, her slim cat tail whipping back and forth. Her ears laid flat against her short black hair as the criminal rifled through her purse, pocketing what was valuable and throwing the rest to the floor. She winced when the man advanced against her again, demanding her phone too.

While she’d been wise to give up her purse, she was not moved to obey this new order. Instead, her hands hovering over the rectangular bulge in her left front pocket. As the man backed her up into the wall, snarling and cursing at her now, gray claws sprung free of her black gloves.

She hesitated. There was a sliver of allowance for private civilian Quirk usage against other people, and this situation was quickly devolving into one of the much contested—but still accepted—exceptions.

Self-defense.

But if she swung her claws at him, if she made contact, if he reported her, if she was caught… her whole life would be open to the scrutiny of others. Every bad and questionable decision she had ever made would be used against her as evidence that she had chosen to abuse her Quirk that day. That she had walked down that street looking for a victim. That she caused her own mugging so she could have an excuse to draw blood.

And even if she won, her name would be dragged through the mud. Even if she proved it was genuine self-defense, everyone in her life, having been thoroughly interrogated, would look at her suspiciously and wonder ‘what if’.

Even if she proved her innocence, some part of her would look back on this night and wonder the same. Was there a different choice she could have made that day? Had she asked for it? The doubt would dog her until the end of her days, an unnecessary source of anxiety for what should have been a very straight forward situation.

But she would never have to explore any of those possibilities, because that night, Spider-Man stepped off a third story balcony and dropped to the street level below.

And right on top of a certain unneighborly gentleman.

The woman yelped. The knife disappeared as the man activated his Quirk too little too late. Ice sprang up around him, but the material rarely ever softened a landing. The criminal hit the ground with a solid thud, out cold.

Heh. Cold.

“Holy shit,” the cat woman said. “You’re that vigilante…!”

Peter looked up. Then he wiped his goggles clean of the fog. He wondered, idly, what Bobby Drake would have to say to know his brother-in-Quirk wasn’t fighting on the side of the angels—or even one very specific Angel. He dismissed the thought about his Hero Track classmate and focused on the woman.

“You’re welcome,” he said pointedly, stepping off the man’s back.

He flipped him over and stuck out his arm, but she grabbed his wrist before he could activate his web shooter. Her sharp claws dug through his red hoodie, tasting skin.

She had a very tight grip for a woman who had almost let herself be gutted over a damn phone.

Peter put two and two together. “What? It’s web, it’s not-” Exasperated, he yanked his arm free. “Look, I just saved you. Trust me a little because that’s what I do.  _ I save people. _ Just because I’m a vigilante and not a Pro Hero doesn’t mean I’m automatically in the business of hurting bad guys!”

“Have you even met the Punisher, Spider-Boy?” the woman countered, brow furrowed.

And that… that was a good point. The Punisher had a body count, and he’d been at the vigilante thing much longer than Spider-Man. Peter deflated, his arms hanging low at his side. Shit. So much for being innocent until proven guilty.

Something of his angst must have been visible in the set of his shoulders because the woman just huffed, relaxing. “It’s nothing personal. We all know your hands are clean.” She knocked her knuckles against his stomach briefly before kneeling by the mugger. “And you can tie him up in any pattern you like. But at least let me get my shit out of his pockets first, okay?”

“Oh. Uh. Right.” After a beat, he dropped down to a crouch and started helping her, busying himself with the thankless—but ironic—task of pickpocketing a criminal.

The man’s pockets were mostly full of receipts and crumbs. After fishing it out, Peter tossed a worn-out leather wallet on the man’s back for safekeeping before finding—and handing over—a small bracelet. Without missing a beat, the woman tucked it away, along with a wad of cash, three gift cards, and a pair of name brand headphones.

Reaching deep into the man’s front pockets, Peter found a rectangular clutch wallet done up in white leather. The clasp, not firmly pushed in, fell open, revealing a driver’s license and a familiar face.

The woman snatched it out of his hands immediately, pinning it closed. She stood then, slightly unsteady, and Peter followed her.

“Felicia, was it?”

Felicia turned her head away. Then she looked back at him. Instantly, her whole demeanor changed. She sidled up to him, flirtatious. Peter had to fight the urge to back up the wall. Negative game recognized game, after all. And she was awfully pretty, but in the way tigers were in the middle of the bloody hunt.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she purred, flatting her palms over his chest. “So. What’s your name?”

“You used it already. It’s Spider-Boy.”

Felicia was surprised at that, clearly. Her expression brightened with genuine humor. Her teeth flashed. She opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was interrupted by the telltale sounds of Pro Heroes on patrol. They both tensed up.

The Pro Heroes were walking down the other side of the street. The two men were loudly chatting with each other about the activities of the apparently boring day. Something about Hero rankings. Something else about regulations. One of the men was whining about losing a bet, and his partner was gleefully unsympathetic.

Their obliviousness was grating. Their patrol could have been cut short by the discovery of a body, had Peter not been watching. Temper flaring, he took a step towards the Pros. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d argued with a Pro Hero. With his words or with his fists.

But Felicia pushed him back. “It’s fine,” she said instead. “I’ll do you this one solid, Spider-Boy. A favor for a favor. You were never here.” She continued to push him back until he was pressed against the wall. Until he had nowhere to go but up.

Peter shot a line straight upwards, snagging a hold on a fifth story balcony, but he hesitated. “They’ll blame you,” he warned her.

“Not if I claim I found him like this, face down on the street.” She sniffed carefully before saying in a softer voice, “‘And all I could smell was alcohol, sirs. Do you think he was drinking in public too?’” She clasped both hands under her chin, turning big, fluttering eyes on Peter.

“You’re devious,” he said. Feeling uncomfortable about leaving her to deal with this alone, he scanned the ground again. Where had the man’s wallet gone? It was an obvious flaw in her story. What if the Pros found it first?

“Devious is my middle name.”

The Pro Heroes had stopped on the other side of the street, squinting into their alley. Still, Peter stalled. “Not according to your driver’s license.”

“Go,” Felicia ordered flatly, and so he did, pulling himself into the sky and leaving her—and a suddenly alarmed Pro Hero duo—behind on the dark streets of New York City.

-

Web slinging was the closest Peter had ever come to flying. And he’d so wanted a Quirk that would let him fly.

He’d come close to it too. The Quirk inheritance on his mother’s side of the family was strong, and it was always a physical one—and always some kind of bug too. His grandmother had the stockiness, build, wings, and antenna of a regal ladybug. Her daughters, on the other hand, had manifested the wings and eyes of a butterfly and a moth, respectively, both beautiful in their own ways.

Oh, how he’d envied and cherished those wings, growing up. When he was a toddler, he would ask his father to check his back every morning. He was so sure he was going to inherit them. It was only a matter of time before he could join his mother in the sky.

But as much as he loved his mother’s Quirk, his father’s… well. As far as Peter was concerned at that age, his father might as well have not had a Quirk at all. Both Richard and his brother Ben had time Quirks. Richard was able to pause time for up to an entire minute. Ben, on the other hand, could turn back time a full twenty seconds.

What utterly boring Quirks to a child used to admiring wings of all shapes and sizes! It wasn’t until he was much older that he started truly appreciating the physics problem both Parker men posed just by existing.

It was fascinating! Peter loved to talk about it, just as long as his conversation partner never speculated how either man could have died with that kind of enormously powerful Quirk under their belts. Somehow, the implication was always that they’d chosen to leave him behind. Peter had gotten into many fist fights over such careless speculation.

But as a child, he had zero interest in the Parker Quirks. He only had eyes on Mary’s black and blue wings. He used to pet them, pull on them, and peer through them like they were colored glass. They were so beautiful and functional and deceptively strong. He wanted her wings so bad.

He’d been so upset when his Quirk finally developed—barely physical, or so they thought. His fourth birthday came and went without the manifestation of… anything, really. He turned five, then six. Then his mother took him to a specialist. 

By that point, Peter had been ready to hear that he was Quirkless. At least twenty percent of the world still was, after all. Being Quirkless would have been fine. May was Quirkless, and she was fun and cool and let him use her phone to play games even though she knew, like, none of them.

However, after a battery of tests, their doctor concluded that Peter was so weakly Quirked, he might as well not be at all.

He’d failed Quirking, somehow. He’d mourned the absence of wings already but hearing this from a doctor was just… embarrassing. He resolved to tell no one about his failure, even as all the adults around him talked about it constantly.

Then, one day, when he was putting up holiday decorations with his mother, his Uncle Ben came in through the front door, armed with a large box of presents. Ben seized up and dropped the box, clutching at his back in pain.

Peter, not expecting the loud noise, screeched and jumped straight up in the air.

And never came down.

In the chaos that followed, Peter’s dad went to his brother, teasing him for biting off more than he could chew, and Peter’s mother, her wispy wings fluttering just once, looked up at Peter, eyes shining.

“Well, I’ll be,” Mary had said warmly. “Our little love bug is a spider after all.”

Peter had immediately burst into tears.

Spiders didn’t have wings, after all, and Peter would have rather been Quirkless than a yucky spider. He was inconsolable.

What a spectacle they had made. Ben used to tell the story at least once a year, and, with every year, the amount of time Peter refused to come off the ceiling increased. The last time he told it, he convinced everyone that a certain sulky child didn’t come down for a full three hours! In reality, it was probably three minutes. Or maybe a full ten.

But it was May who got him down eventually, armed with that alluring phone of hers. She talked out loud to no one in particular about all the cool and awesome spiders she was learning about on the internet, and she’d sounded so genuinely enthused about it that Peter eventually forgot his angst and scuttled down the wall behind her. By the time dinner started, he was sitting in her lap, cell phone claimed and talking loudly about his own discoveries, despite the fact she was right there, learning them with him.

Even at six, he was easily manipulated by his own curiosity, and May—not quite Aunt May then, he recalled—knew that the best. May just hugged him and smiled.

“That’s my little Hero,” she would whisper.

And Peter smiled too, already dreaming of a future where he could truly be her little Hero.

-

“You’d reach out to me if she needs help, right?”

Peter’s head lifted at the quiet voice of Quentin Beck. The man was sitting on the corner of Ned’s desk, frowning thoughtfully. Up close and personal, the retired Hero cast a somewhat dazzling figure. Ned was stumbling over his words. The rest of the class had funneled out, save for a few stragglers like Peter. The conversation wasn’t meant to be overheard.

“You’re her friend,” Beck said, rolling an apple over the back of his hand. “I know it’s your duty as a friend to keep your friends’ secrets but… sometimes it’s better to speak up rather than to sit back and let things happen, you know?” Ned muttered an affirmative answer. It earned him a smile—and more importantly, the corner of his desk back. “Great! When she needs help, know that I am here. After all, good old Mysterio still knows a thing or two about punching above his weight class.”

Beck laughed with a somewhat self-deprecating tone, running a hand through his thick hair. Then his eyes abruptly jumped to Peter’s. Reflexively, Peter shot him a thin-lipped smile before looking down at Ned.

He was not there to talk to Beck. Not at all.

Beck huffed a laugh out at that, passing him. “Peter,” he said cordially, giving a quick shoulder squeeze.

Peter nodded politely and let him pass. After a beat, he turned his head, watching Beck pause by the door to talk to a trio of students who were waiting for him. He said something with a smirk and all three of them laughed on cue. Peter frowned.

He dragged his attention away from the door at the sound of Ned groaning and rubbing his hair. “Can you imagine being so handsome and cool?” Ned said with a shaky sigh.

“Uh…” Peter said, then pointed at himself with an offended look.

Ned snorted. “Shut up, man.” He stood up, dragging his backpack from the floor and shoving his books and laptop in there with one practiced sweep. “I wonder why Beck wanted to know about MJ so badly.” He made a face at Peter. “Punching above her weight class… she would do that, wouldn’t she?”

“Physically or metaphorically?” Peter asked, eyes on the door again.

Quentin Beck’s carefully cultivated image of a Hero didn’t resonate with Peter anymore. That cashmere sweater and the daily kale smoothies jarred heavily with his almost seven years of experience of roughing it on the streets with no backup or no community support. And he’d been so excited to meet a kindred spirit too, even if it was only one-sided. In his wildest imaginings, he even daydreamed about what it would be like to de-mask in front of Beck and tell him what it was like being NYC’s most notorious vigilante.

Being hated. Being mocked. Scorned. Villainized. Made an example of.

Beck had started as a vigilante before countries started bending over backwards to throw honorary licenses at him. But he’d spent at least five years running. He’d get it, or so Peter thought.

But now, Peter knew Beck better, and now, he’d rather unmask in front of the Avengers—the Central Hero Agency’s flagship team—than even  _ hint  _ to his professor about their shared calling.

Because, at the end of the day, Quentin Beck didn’t act like a vigilante. Instead, he acted like Tony Stark, the world’s most famous Hero Support. Or, scratch that, Beck acted how Peter assumed the world’s most famous Hero Support would act. Smarmy, brilliant, superior in all things. Handsome and photogenic. Rich. A voice piece for a world that wanted their Heroes tidy and orderly.

The real Tony Stark, on the other hand, had been a pleasant surprise. A latecomer to the heroing gig, Stark’s debut was a fully functional red and gold battle suit. It flew out of his tower the day the Chitari invaded and rapidly turned the tides of the battle, and it—and a newly emerged Captain America—ended up becoming the focal point of the alliance that would eventually be called the Avengers.

Stark had a rather weak magnetism Quirk, but what he did have was years and years of prowess and genius in inventing weapons and machines for Stark Industries. He brought that—as well as extremely deep pockets and a penchant for chatting with the media—to the fledgling alliance, which went a long way in making sure each of the members weren’t imprisoned for acting outside of the Central Hero Agency’s authority.

It wasn’t until weeks after the alliance was fortified and restructured into its own agency that the pilot of the Iron Man suit was revealed—a newly medically discharged James Rhodes Jr. Given the fact he’d only been allowed to use his Quirk in the dispatch of his military duties, he was understandably hesitant to stand with Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor, and the Hulk so openly.

But that was more than ten years ago, and all rogue Avengers (Rhodes included), were celebrated as New York’s top hero agency under the Central Hero Agency.

And despite being classified as only a Hero Support, Tony Stark did not fade into the woodwork. He both led and followed accordingly, flexing his genius and his CEO experience to move things along. The leadership of the Avengers was an often-speculated upon controversy.. While Captain America was the head of the agency on paper, insiders indicated that the structure of the Avengers was much more flexible than that. When Stark and Rogers weren’t co-leading the team, they bowed to the expertise of whoever knew the most about the assignment. In fact, the whole team was almost suspended over a viral set of photos that showed the Hulk, of all people, leading a mission into New Mexico over some colleague’s experiment that had gone horribly wrong. The fact that the mission was a success and the colleague was retrieved and treated meant little to the media and the political frenzy that followed.

Stark was very vocal about his thoughts about that. He was also extremely vocal about his thoughts on Pro Hero Society, and they were less than complimentary.

Peter’s first in-person experience with the man was at ESU. A frequent guest lecturer, Stark had been tapped to give the keynote speech at Peter’s freshman orientation. Support Track had been vibrating with excitement—one of their own, speaking!—while Hero Track traded notes on who was going to ask what questions about the Avengers.

But Stark, true to his nature, upended that with a short, three minute spiel that started with “Welcome to ESU” and ended with “here’s my email if you want me to buy you out of your contract.”

Said contracts provided free tuition, room, and board for four years in exchange for three years of service as a Pro Hero.

“No one should march into death over a little debt,” Stark said glibly to a crowd of stunned young adults—then walked out.

It was very dramatic. It made the papers.

Stark didn’t get banned from ESU over this, though the rumor mill said it was close. He stuck to his guns too. In every lecture or seminar he taught, no matter who he taught, he repeated the offer— “no questions asked,” he would say grimly.

So, if he really thought about it, Tony Stark was the only reason why Peter was considering his exit plan. Without it, ESU would make them pay back all the tuition. It would ruin everything that he and Aunt May had done to build their family up again. Without it, Peter would have stuck through the rest of the year—and the required three years of service afterwards—without a peep.

But now, he had options. Options that a guy like Beck would hate, given how much he lamented in-class over his “too short” career.

-

They found MJ outside on the quad. She was sitting in the dying grass, makeup mirror open in one hand. She had a massive shiner and, rather than covering it up, she was poking the swelling bump with interest.

“ _ MJ _ ,” Ned exclaimed, hurling himself over the last couple of feet. He landed, sprawled, at her knees, his face an open book of concern. “What happened?”

It was an effective expression. If Peter had been the one wearing it, been the one worrying, MJ would have been halfway across the quad already. From Ned, though, it hit a little different. It made her a little ill, like she felt like she should be apologizing for something and she didn’t like it.

“A rogue discus from Hero Track,” she said. Then, there was a delayed smirk. “They’re ever so sorry.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t get your teeth knocked out,” Peter said cautiously, lowering himself to the grass.

MJ laughed, leaning back. She crossed her ankles in front of her, sliding her legs between Peter and Ned. “I’m tough.” After a beat, she rolled her eyes. “Also, a guy from Hero Track came over and healed me a bit. Harvey? Harold? His face looked familiar but his name didn’t ring a bell.”

“This is getting really dangerous,” Ned said, voice dropping. “Maybe you should apologize before they seriously hurt you.”

MJ balked at that. “Are you kidding me? My next scathing article is practically writing itself.” She drafted her heading in the air with a flourish. “‘Failure of Institution to Teach—Whole Cohorts of Heroes Fail to Exercise Basic Self-Control.’”

“Could use some polish,” Peter offered. MJ shot him a wide, dangerous smile before flipping him off.

“Come on, Peter,” Ned challenged, eyebrows needling together.

“MJ will ask for help if she needs it,” Peter replied, knowing better by now.

“And MJ doesn’t need any,” she said sharply. Glaring, MJ leaned forward suddenly and did a sharp triangle gesture between the three of them. “Who of us here has actually gotten into a real fist fight? Oh, just me?”

Peter didn’t respond. He couldn’t cite the bigger—and bolder—bruises he’d gained as Spider-Man. In her own perspective, MJ only knew them at school, and Ned was infamously docked twenty points in a fighting practical exam for apologizing to a dummy. Peter, on the other hand, was a chronic underperformer on purpose. The spider Quirk came with enhanced strength proportional to his size, and while he was smaller than some people, he’d grown quite a bit since the Quirk first manifested. With that growth came even more strength. He could seriously hurt someone—or something—if he wasn’t careful. And property damage wasn’t covered by tuition—at least, not for Support Track.

“Don’t sweat it, Ned. I’m scrappy, I’m armed with mace and a taser at all times, and I’m ready to bite.” MJ clicked her teeth together in emphasis. 

Peter’s eyes slid over to Ned as he remembered the running list they’d put together in high school over MJ’s unknown Quirk. Peter’s favorite running theory was that she was part shark. She was rather prone to biting, after all, and she was a fantastic swimmer.

But Ned wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was looking at the screen of his phone. He was uncharacteristically distracted, mind pulled away from their current conversation. He was blinking rapidly, as if trying to absorb the contents of a text.

“Anyway, I’m feeling rather riled up,” MJ announced, moving on. “Want to skip the next class and do something wild?”

Ned shot up to his feet suddenly. “Sorry, no. I’m actually busy?”

“We all are,” MJ said. “There’s class.” Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you texting, bud?”

“A girl,” Ned said absently. He adjusted the straps of his backpack before replying back to the message in a flurry of swipes and taps. It appeared to be a very long message.

MJ was entertained. “Oh, does she go to another school?” she asked. Then she knocked her knuckles into Peter’s closest arm, muttering. “This is SO gonna be like junior year in high school.”

“What?” Peter was confused.

MJ didn’t respond to him. “Same one from last week?”

“Yeah,” Ned said softly, smiling down at the screen.

Peter could tell MJ was about to say something but thought better of it. She idly pressed her teeth into her bottom lip before saying, “We want to meet her sometime.”

“Sure,” Ned said, shoving his phone in his pocket. “Sorry to run. See you guys later!”

Peter watched him go, feeling a sense of déjà vu. He turned to MJ. “And why do we want to meet her?”

MJ rolled her eyes. She pulled her legs back to her, retying a loose set of laces on her left shoe. “Beyond the fact that it’s our sacred duty to mess with Ned… do you not remember junior year?”

He did not. He’d jumped into vigilantism by the time he was 16. “It all… blurs together,” Peter admitted. Lots of sleepless nights. And concussions.

“Well, that month and a half you were dating Liz Allan, you basically ditched us.”

A twinge of half-forgotten guilt hit him with a precision shot. “Hey, that’s not fair,” Peter complained.

He remembered that. He remembered Liz Allan and the excitement of dating an older girl. He remembered the less exciting bits too, like the fact that Liz’s dad was a secret super villain building a weapons stockpile. The subsequent clashes between the Vulture and Spider-Man made up some of the first extremely serious situations Peter had fallen into. Not everything was about stopping purse snatchers and picking cats out of trees. Sometimes it was about getting impaled and almost crushed to death by a man who certainly knew Spider-Man was dating his daughter.

Peter had nightmares for months afterwards, and, as a result, the thing with Liz disintegrated almost immediately. Fortunately, Liz never put two and two together. Instead, she’d just thought he was going through some personal stuff. He still had a purple index card from her hanging on his pinboard at home—a list of resources she’d painstakingly researched and wrote down for him in her neat, curly writing. How the Vulture could have raised such a kind person was truly beyond Peter.

But if Peter hadn’t been a great boyfriend at that time, he’d been an awful friend. But Ned and MJ just gave him his space. When he made his excuses, they accepted him. When he ditched them, they said nothing. And when he came back, it was like nothing had happened.

He’d needed that so badly after the Vulture.

Peter rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t remember much of what was going on,” he said. “But I do remember I wasn’t the only one ditching people.”

“Sure,” MJ said easily. “Because Ned was pretending to date someone too.”

“What?” Peter sputtered. He didn’t remember that. “That’s so- Ned would never- Ned isn’t a jealous guy.” He’d expect that out of Flash, not Ned.

“No, but he’s a nice one,” MJ countered. “If he was also busy with a girl, then your extreme flakiness wouldn’t be an issue now, would it?” Now that leap in logic? It sounded exactly like Ned. Peter groaned, covering his face. “Me, on the other hand, I’m willing to confront you and point out how much of a dick you were back then.”

“But you didn’t at the time,” Peter said, dropping his hand. “You gave me space too.”

MJ looked surprised. Then she tugged on her ear, looking away. “…You looked pretty bad. I figured you didn’t need me on your case too.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, he let himself feel warm affection for his two friends. It swelled and it swelled until he was beaming and fighting the urge to hug something. He clasped his hands together to keep it in.

He kept so much hidden and secret in his life, more than MJ and Ned would ever know. But it was gratifying and relieving to know that, when the mask slipped and some of the truth came bubbling out, Ned and MJ’s instinctive response was to clam up and protect him.

Not all of his loved ones were so trustworthy. Peter had been burned before.

Just then, the school clock sounded, ringing with the hours.

Annoyed, MJ roughly tousled her own hair before saying, “Fine. I’ll go to class.” She started to get up.

Peter caught her wrist in a loose, three finger grip. “Don’t tease Ned about this,” he asked. “Whatever this is. I don’t care if this is junior year all over again. I don’t even care if he says his girlfriend goes to a school in Canada.”

MJ barked out a laugh at that. “Fine. I’ll lay off of him. A little.”

Knowing that was all he could get at this point, Peter released her, rising to his feet. Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, speaking of lay off… Beck wants to talk to you.”

“He hit you guys up too, huh?” MJ mimed barfing. “Ugh. He wants to ‘mentor me through this learning experience’ or some bullshit.”

They both grabbed their backpacks and headed to the closest building.

“Is it really that bad?” Peter asked, pushing the door open for them both.

MJ went in first. “With any luck, I’ll be expelled. Tarnishing the school’s reputation and what not.”

Peter didn’t like the sound of that.

They walked in silence down the hall, stepping around other students. Peter scanned the space automatically. Some of their peers were absorbed in their own conversations, others were alone and on their phones. And some looked up, their expressions tightening with recognition as they passed. MJ was public enemy number 1 for a lot of these people. Peter stepped a little closer to her, memorizing the faces of those who tracked MJ’s progress just a little too closely.

Five minutes later, they were in the clear. In the set of classrooms mostly used for Support Track, hardly anyone was watching. And, more importantly, their destination was here.

MJ stopped just outside of her classroom. She pivoted, frowning at Peter. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you unnecessarily chaperoning me,” she said bluntly.

“Says the woman who just caught a discus to the face,” Peter replied just as bluntly.

MJ made a face at him. “You stubborn prick. What happened to ‘MJ will ask for help when she needs it’?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? You never think you need it.”

MJ paused. Then she reached out to him, lightly touching his face. “Your concern for me is sweet, but what is a sticky body and a danger sense going to do here that I can’t do for myself?” She clapped his cheek once and went into the classroom.

It was probably for the best. MJ wouldn’t have liked his response anyway. She never did like people shielding her from danger. Even if Spider-Man wasn’t a thing, Peter would still want to get between her and the next flying projectile—because the next one might actually kill her.

He felt defeated anyway.

Then Peter was jostled forward by a backpack. “Oh, sorry,” Johnny Storm said, jogging past him. He never looked at Peter, too busy sliding into the open door of the lecture hall just across from MJ’s class. A few more Hero Track stragglers were behind him: Doreen Green, Jubilation Lee, and America Chavez. Kitty Pryde skipped the door entirely and slipped through the wall itself.

They were late. Captain America himself was lecturing, and he’d already started.

“The true power of a Hero,” Steve Rogers was saying in measured tones, “lies not just in their own actions. But also in what they inspire others to do.”

Someone came to close the door—James Rhodes Jr himself. Rhodes paused, letting an apologetic Bobby Drake duck under his arm. Then Rhodes saw Peter. “You coming in, kid? Open talk, anyone can join.”

Peter wanted it so bad. He steeled his spine. “No thanks,” he said stiffly and walked away

Being a hero was never in the cards. Being a vigilante would doom him to failure.

He wasn’t an inspiration to anyone. He couldn’t even protect his own friends.

-   
  


In hindsight, Peter should have anticipated the bad time he was going to have on the town that night.

He stopped a carjacking, walked a girl home, caught an AC unit before it hit the street, webbed up a thief to the stolen merchandise he was trying to pawn off, and gave directions to a bunch of tourists. All in all, a successful night patrolling.

But he’d also gotten screamed at, beaten with a book bag, lectured in three languages, kicked in the shin by a hoofed senior citizen, and had the cops called on him. Twice.

He took the subway home, loudly complaining to anyone who listened about the shitty night he’d just had. A couple of stops in, he started talking about the unfair differences between vigilantism and heroism, and how no one in their right mind would kick Captain America—in the shin or otherwise.

“Everyone’s one disaster away from becoming a vigilante or a villain,” offered a blind lady on the trip. “Say, did you know Captain America was technically a vigilante back in the day? They didn’t do licenses in the forties.”

_ Great.  _ As if Peter didn’t have enough reasons to resent an allegedly very nice war hero. He strongly doubted Rogers got kicked in the shins from the people he’d saved from HYDRA.

How did other modern-day vigilantes handle the public hate? Peter couldn’t stand it. Spider-Man needed a mentor. Or a role model. A different example. Something.

He needed presence too. An aura, but not necessarily an intimidating one. He’d spent six years building up the “Friendly Neighborhood” thing. It would be a shame to discard it. It would definitely need to be a competent one, a sense that he knew what he was doing. A certainty that he would see the night through, no matter what the night brought. Right now, to most people, he just seemed like a misbehaving child in a bad homemade suit.

So, who could he emulate? Mysterio was out, for obvious reasons. Captain America was too wrapped up in patriotism. As for the Punisher, well…

That would certainly push Peter into the “unfriendly” territory. He’d met the man exactly once and had felt rubbed raw with the force of his gaze and found wanting. The Punisher was the very definition of intense, which Peter should have expected. He was not sure what else he was looking for in a man who was shot seventeen times in the chest on national television… and walked it off.

Spooky stuff.

Peter should probably lean more into the spider stuff. Whatever he came up with was already head and shoulders above the persona he was trying to develop at ESU. As Flash liked to say, Sticky Hands McGee inspired confidence in no one.

At least Spider-Man had some potential, but he still had a long way to go. Even the civilians who chatted with him nicely thought he was a fourteen-year-old boy hopped up on cola and gummy bears. The kinder lecturers were so sure he was on the cusp of tripping over his shoes and getting himself killed, no matter how impressive of a save he’d just pulled off.

Maybe he should talk less. Oh, that would be hard though. He chattered quite a bit under the mask. But maybe the voice was the problem.

He expressed as much to Ned and MJ during their weekly Suit Maintenance and Design class.

“Your voice isn’t that high pitched,” MJ said. She was adding more pockets to her jumpsuit. “You just tend to talk really, really fast when you’re enthusiastic about something, which makes you sound like a boy who touched his first boob at a Star Trek screening.”

“He’s never even seen Star Trek,” Ned butted in, offended. He was testing a new reflective material that he’d made that would make him practically invisible in people’s peripheral vision. So far, it was making him look like a shiny Christmas present. Peter couldn’t wait to break it to him.

“So not the part of that metaphor that I needed defending against…” Peter muttered. 

“Oh.” Ned paused as he rewinded the conversation. Then he chortled, amused. MJ seemed pleased. Peter just sighed heavily and redirected his attention to the soft shoes he’d designed in freshman year. His Quirk worked through them, which was the only positive thing he could say about them. They wore out almost immediately every time.

The three of them were spread out over a long 8-foot table. Two sewing machines and a basket of scissors sat at one end, and a mountain of fabric and needles sat at the other. Bit of bent metal plates littered the space between them along with cut out rubber. Beyond the materials they themselves came up with, Support Track wasn’t given great things to work with. The Hero Track version of this class involved a lot more designing, a lot more Kevlar and cutting-edge materials, and a lot more working with suit design specialists.

Peter would resent this class for what it was—basically a bunch of young adults making glorified Halloween costumes—if not for the valuable skills he’d been able to learn and apply to his Spider-Man suit. Vigilantes didn’t have access to suit design specialists, after all. And as rough as his current suit looked, the stitches were clean and the material was reinforced by synthetic spider silk sewn throughout the cotton.

In fact, the webbing was working so well as a suit material, Peter was considering using it instead of a base fabric for his next suit design.

The suit would be sleeker, Peter had already decided. More form fitting. Closer in nature to what Pro Heroes took for granted. And maybe it would be the first step towards many to building up his reputation in the eyes of New York City.

“So. How about that girlfriend, Ned?” MJ asked slyly, jostling Peter out of his thoughts. “Have we met her?”

Peter lowered his shoes, his soles abandoned.  _ Don’t you start _ , he thought, narrowing his eyes at MJ.

“You wouldn’t know her. She goes to school in Canada,” Ned said, oblivious to the smug look MJ shot Peter.

“Well, it’s basically the weekend, and MJ hasn’t been expelled yet,” Peter said, forcefully changing the subject. “How about we celebrate?”

“I’m down,” Ned said easily. He shook out his suit and frowned at it as it crinkled loudly.

“Alcohol and drunk people and loud places,” MJ drawled. “All of my least favorite things.”

“We can do something else,” Ned offered, looking at her.

“I didn’t say that,” MJ said quickly. “Just… let’s avoid the usual ESU haunts and try something new.” She paused the sewing machine, propping her chin up in her hand. Her teeth flashed. “And maybe you can invite your girlfriend too.”

Goddamnit, MJ.


	3. Chapter 3

Ned slipped back into the booth with them, phone in hand. “She said she’s on her way.”

“Can’t wait,” MJ said with a deceptively even tone. Peter wanted to kick her. He refrained.

They were at their third bar of the night, guided only by the carefully filtered internet search on Ned’s phone.

They didn’t spend any time at the first one. Though there was a decent distance between ESU and the place, the very first person they ran into was wearing an ESU basketball jersey. They had no chance to see if this was an alum or a current peer; Ned immediately turned around and pushed the two of them back out into the night.

The second one was cramped. The bartenders were quick and vigilant about finding, making, and distributing orders. Their fastest worker was a very tall, very charming boy with no less than six fully formed limbs. (Peter, neither very tall nor very charming, almost dropped their entire order when the bartender handed it over with a smile and a wink. Sigh.)

But the space of the second bar was eaten up by office workers already three drinks deep. There also appeared to be a loudly (but slowly) unraveling romantic relationship happening at the front table. By the time MJ, Ned, and Peter scooted out, the man had his purple hands in his hair and he was staring, glum, at the table full of glossy printed photos that his partner had laid in front of him.

MJ had to be forcefully pulled away from that developing drama.

But the third bar was just right. It was quieter and more up their alley. Everything was done up in golds, whites, and deep hunter greens. Vibrant and warm with floor to ceiling windows and comfortable chairs, it seemed to convey a sense of home. Perhaps a richer person’s home, but a home nevertheless. The crowd was a little older than their usual haunts, but the staff were friendly and their fellow customers were kind.

For instance, Ned had tripped over one such patron’s long, scaled tail, and she, utterly embarrassed, had purchased them their first drinks. Peter helped her curl her tail better under her chair, unsure how rude it was to ask if her Quirk was related to dragons or dinosaurs. Her small arms indicated the latter. Her date, a literal bear of a man, expressed his hearty thanks when he arrived and talked them through the bar’s offerings. He was a regular.

As it turned out, he was right. Their food was great, which meant Peter had more options here than pretending to sip something that had no appeal to him—biological or otherwise.

It was a Quirk thing. Spiders weren’t impervious to alcohol, but while Peter can and did get drunk, alcohol blew through him quickly. It never relaxed him either. Instead, Peter tended to get hyper, then erratic, then sleepy, all within thirty minutes of consuming his first beverage. Peter and alcohol together was a mix that tended to end everyone’s good time. Hence why he tended to pretend to sip.

He also pretended to sip because people—especially people his age—tended to get very distressed at the idea that some folks just don’t drink. But what was one more lie to add to the bunch? Besides, this was barely a lie. It was more like… social lubricant.

…Oh jeez, was he really starting to justify his own bad behavior now? This was the start of his villain origin story, wasn’t it? Going to a bar with friends. Who knew?

Anyway, the third bar was probably going to be the last. They’d claimed one of the best booths by the window, and Peter had made his way through approximately half of the food menu already. MJ was getting visibly sleepy, and Ned was beet red and talking slowly, enunciating each word clearly. The staff had brought about a round of waters, and Peter took that as a sign from the universe that it was well and truly time to go.

But then Ned looked out the window and stood suddenly, waving at something. Peter and MJ turned too slowly to see who it was, and by then, Ned was starting to panic, as if a mess he was juggling was about to obey the siren call of gravity all over the place. He leaned across the table, hands flat against the surface.

“Look. Look.” Ned paused. “ _ Look. _ ”

“My eyes are open,” MJ said slowly.

“They are not,” Peter refuted. She pushed his shoulder lightly but didn’t fight him on it. They were sitting on the same side of the table as one another, across from Ned, and she kept leaning on him. It was rather nice. She was, as always, very warm.

“She’s here,” Ned hissed urgently. “She’s here and… You guys keep calling her my girlfriend. I know, tee hee, ha ha, let’s make fun of Ned-”

“That is generally how we talk about you behind your back, yes,” MJ said obnoxiously. “Especially the tee hee, ha ha.”

But Ned barreled over her, whispering without a pause or even a single breath. “-but that’s not what she is and I don’t want you guys to think that because she’s really cool and nice and cute and I really do like her  _ and don’t embarrass me, oh my god-”  _ He cut himself off mid-sentence. “Hey Betty! You made it.” Ned’s voice was slightly strained. Peter turned his head to look.

The girl who walked up was nothing like Peter would have expected. She was tiny, for starters, and had ruler straight blond hair and crystal blue eyes. She was wearing a dark gray cardigan with a collared shirt underneath it, both of which were about two sizes too big for her. In the crook of her arm was a leather portfolio. She looked like a census taker. Or an intern for a political office. Or a caricature of a high school student body president.

“I made it,” Betty replied, beaming. “Sorry I was late.” She and Ned grinned at each other for a long moment before, with a jolt, Betty seemed to remember Peter and MJ were there. “Your friends! Hi, Ned’s friends.” Despite her warmth toward Ned, she was very awkward and stiff.

“Hi, Ned’s other friend,” MJ said, suddenly looking a lot more awake. She was squinting suspiciously.

A few moments later, there was a small jumble as the three of them rearranged plates and drinks to make room for Betty. One of the staff came by and asked Betty if she would like something to order something.

“Sorry, I don’t drink,” Betty said. “But I’ll have a water. Thanks.”

MJ’s face scrunched up in further confusion. Peter, on the other hand, lit up. Finally.  _ Brethren _ . He subtly pushed some of the unfinished bar food in her general direction, but her hands never left her lap. Odd.

“So, um. You’re MJ and you’re Peter. Obviously.” MJ opened her mouth to challenge that. Peter elbowed her to stop. “What have you been up to today?”

Ignoring the question, MJ took this as an opportunity to interrogate this new stranger. Rather than be put out by this forwardness, Betty seemed almost relieved to follow MJ’s lead.

Her name was Betty Brant. She grew up in Queens but was currently attending a Quirk specialist college in Canada. She was in her junior year there but was taking a short leave of absence. She’d met Ned a handful of weeks ago when he’d helped her out of a bind. She was in New York because of that bind but was planning to head back to school in Canada by the start of the next term. Her parents no longer lived in Queens, so she was crashing at Ned’s apartment.

“And she’s been a great roommate,” Ned interjected.

“Aw, thanks,” she said, and they both smiled at each other. Again. There was a lot of smiling in general. Peter was kind of getting a kick out of it. He’d never seen Ned like this before. And Peter would have continued liking it if Betty hadn’t jerked visibly in front of them. Her eyes glowed white, and her body flickered in and out of existence.

Then her phone buzzed audibly.

She pulled it out of her pocket, frowning at the screen. “Sorry, I have to take this.” She stood up stiffly. Then she walked outside, phone pressed to her ear. Peter watched her go, frowning.

Ned watched her too. He had a soft, distracted expression, which meant he was entirely unprepared for when MJ fisted his collar and dragged him halfway across the table. He yelped, and for good reason. Even Peter was shocked. He grabbed her elbow reflexively, bewildered at the turn of events that led them there.

MJ was glowering, almost incandescently in her rage. But her voice, when she spoke, was very, very soft. “If you invented a girlfriend for yourself, I’m going to have to kill you. You know that, right?”

There was something tight and hurt in her words that wasn’t well hidden enough behind her outrage. She sounded like he’d betrayed her trust, and Peter quickly figured out why. Trust was hard in a superhuman society when Quirks came in all shapes and sizes.

Quirks could kill, and Quirks could heal. Quirks could create, and Quirks could destroy.

Quirks could inspire, Quirks could persuade, and Quirks could enslave.

And sometimes, Quirks could do all of these things at once.

“What? She’s not-  _ she’s real _ , okay?” Ned protested. He looked at Peter for help. “Peter, please-”

“She glitched, man,” Peter pointed out. “I don’t know how else to describe that. Do you?”

“Sure. There’s a logical explanation for all of this,” Ned said reasonably, untangling MJ’s grip from his shirt. “Though, really, guys. I’m hurt you think I’d do this. But also weirdly pleased you think I could? Artificial intelligence is really difficult.” Ned cocked his head to the side. “Although-”

“Save your Quirk-inspired breakthroughs for when I’m not weighing whether or not I should be your friend,” MJ said coldly, sitting back. She crossed her arms over her chest, still looking hurt.

Despite this condemnation, Ned’s Quirk was still active. Peter could smell a sharp peppermint scent from him, the only outward sign of his Quirk that Peter knew of. But he wasn’t looking at the ceiling, brainstorming an epiphany that would advance the field of artificial intelligence. Instead, he was looking at MJ, expression slackening.

What was he reading in her? What insight was he picking up? MJ was so hard to understand sometimes, a closed book written in a dead language locked in a box with no key. Peter envied Ned’s Quirk, as usual.

But whatever it was that he saw, Ned didn’t announce it like he usually did. Instead, he just looked sad.

“I can explain it better, I think,” said an unexpected voice. As one, all three of them looked up. Betty had returned. She slid back into the booth next to Ned, expression somber. “It’s my Quirk.”

“That’s convenient,” MJ replied caustically.

“It’s not, though. Not for me.” Betty let out a gusty sigh. She looked at Ned, as if for strength, and then said, “It’s all about data, my Quirk. I can become, travel through, pick up, and store data.” Her mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “I’d be the world’s greatest hacker… if I could control it.” She looked at Ned again. “That’s why I’m in Canada. I’m not studying to be a hero like you guys. I’m studying to be  _ normal _ .”

That revelation hung in the air for a moment, ringing like a struck bell. Betty avoided their eyes, her expression ashamed. Meanwhile, Peter was confused. He needed more than this to understand.

Ned must have seen that on his face because he picked up where she left off. “It’s a… specialized school for out-of-control Quirks,” he said hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Betty said, dragging her eyes back to them. This time, her smile was a little more genuine. “Compared to some of my peers, I’m lucky. Really.”

MJ stayed silent. She was staring in the middle distance, thinking.

“What do you mean by out of control?” Peter asked, still confused.

Betty looked relieved he’d asked. “I spent much of my childhood getting pulled out of anything with storage space,” she explained. “Hard drives, servers, phones. If someone received a text, there was a risk of me getting pulled into their phone. If someone sent out an email, there was a risk of me following it. If someone downloads a video, well… I could get stuck in the video.”

“That sounds rough,” Peter said.

“Yeah, it was,” Betty said with feeling. “I caused a lot of trouble for my parents, but I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t figure out how to navigate out on my own most of the time. They had to keep hiring people to help me out. Like people with coding Quirks, or IT specialists.” She shrugged. “I’m always getting stuck in the weirdest places.”

“What’s the worst place you’ve been?” MJ asked finally. Her tight expression was easing finally. She seemed curious now. Betty was relaxing a little too, either in response to MJ’s change in behavior or because of the growing familiarity with them. She was losing much of the rigid body language that had made Peter consider, even as briefly as he did, that Ned had created an artificial girlfriend.

Which Ned would never, ever do. Clearly. But… he couldn’t help but think about the possibilities.

“I got caught in the Central Hero Agency’s servers for about 8 weeks recently,” Betty confided. “The stay wasn’t bad. It was the exit that was awkward. They were  _ not  _ happy to find me there.” She lifted her fingers. For the first time, Peter noticed the bandages wrapped around the tips. “They made me sign so many NDAs, and all to protect information I don’t even remember interacting with...”

“That’s the Central Hero Agency for you,” Peter said darkly. This time, MJ elbowed him. It was a half-hearted nudge, done almost automatically. Peter brightened up at the gesture.

“But the internet’s probably the worst,” Betty said with a laugh. “Billions upon billions of requests for information flying every which way. Like getting lost in a Wikipedia research spiral, but the topic changes are happening in less than a nanosecond, and you’re along for the ride”

“Do you remember everything about the internet?” MJ asked curiously. Peter could guess where she was going with that. A person with all the knowledge on the internet would be a hell of a resource for their school paper.

Betty paused. Then she said, “The human brain has a limited capacity for information—a fact for which I am most grateful.”

There was something very careful about the way she worded that.

And it made MJ wince. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think through the implications of what I said.”

Peter didn’t either—until he did. He tended to think of the internet as a collection of news, memes, and YouTube. But the internet was so much more than that—for better and for worse. And the “worse” was pretty damn bad. In Betty’s shoes, he’d be thankful for a spotty memory too.

“So, your stint in the Central Hero Agency’s servers… how recent was that?” MJ asked. “It hasn’t been in the news.”

Peter wondered if he should warn Betty to stop talking. MJ had that gleam in her eye that said she was thinking about prospects, scoops, and leads. She would be the kind of person to leak the information about the Central Hero Agency’s shoddy network and firewall in a school paper.

“Extremely recent,” Betty said. “It’s how I met Ned.” She beamed.

MJ blinked, clearly distracted. She swiveled her head—and focus—to Ned.

“Some of my tech was picking up on a weird signal,” Ned said. “It was Betty talking to herself. Once I figured out what it was and translated it back into English, I sent a message to her.”

“Then we started chatting,” Betty said warmly. They were looking at each other again. “I explained what was going on. Then Ned went ahead and invented the most astonishing thing.” Betty reached under her collar and pulled out a familiar looking little gizmo. It was now attached to a long thin chain around her neck.

“It’s a receiver?” Peter asked, intrigued.

“It’s nothing,” Ned said quickly, his ears turning red. “She can take things into the data with her, you know? So I sent her a coded version of this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an identical necklace, only this one didn’t have a chain. “It sends a data packet out to its twin, then downloads it back. A signal, kind of? Two cups connected by a string? It was like she was lost at sea and she needed a north star, or a life saver, or something.”

Ned’s voice was turning low and gruff the way that it always did when he was singled out for an excellent grade or a particularly incredible achievement. He was also glaring at Peter with a strange mixture of confusion and annoyance. That was probably because Peter was grinning ear to ear at him, stupidly pleased at the unraveling of this whole tale. He was proud of Ned.

“A beacon lighting the way back home,” Betty whispered, cradling the necklace between both palms. She was smiling down at it, eyes glittering. “I’ll never get lost in the data again.”

“I don’t know about that,” Ned said, as cautious as ever. “We still have a lot of testing to do.”

“I know,” Betty said. She looked up. “But I have complete faith in you.” 

Ned mumbled something at his lap, completely embarrassed.

“Well, I’m glad you ran into the right Hero for the job, Betty,” MJ said kindly. Ned sputtered, instantly refuting it.

But Betty just grinned. “Me too.”

-

The night should have ended pleasantly—and it had been well on its way to doing so.

The four of them, good friends now, exited the bar and headed down the street. It was a cool night, though not distressingly so. It was cool enough that they thought nothing of walking and talking still, weaving continuing conversations from the bar through periodic debates on which method they should take to get back to Ned’s apartment. It was closer than ESU, and Ned was no stranger to having MJ and Peter crash there when the dorms were too much to take.

Behind MJ and Ned, who were making up, Peter and Betty chatted about Quirks. Hers was fascinating. His, less so.

“Sticky hands and situational anxiety,” he said flippantly when she asked about his Quirk.

A line creased between her eyebrows. Peter remembered it vividly, that physical hint of her disapproval. He remembered also the cool blast of night air seeping through his faded ESU t-shirt, and he remembered also the retreating sounds of people talking. He remembered thinking it was a nice night for a walk.

What he didn’t remember was when their adventuring party gained three new members.

He only remembered that it was his spidey sense picked up on them first.

The second group came at them from the side. One man cut off Peter and Betty. He immediately got between MJ and Ned, looping his arms around their shoulders. MJ’s snappy response to this died off quickly and uneasily—and for reasons Peter would pick up on soon after. Betty and Peter himself were boxed in by another two men, one on either side of them. They bumped together, grabbing on each other reflexively as their space was encroached on by strangers.

The man in front was already talking, crowing about a place around the corner with good food, good drinks, and a good view. “But my friends and I, you see,” he said, “we’re awfully lonely by ourselves. Won’t you join us?”

Ned’s shaking voice rose from ahead. “But we’re actually heading home, sir—urk!”

“Not yet, bud,” the man said, turning his head. He leered at Peter and Betty. “But soon. Probably.”

Peter quickly saw why MJ and Ned quit talking. The man had razor sharp needles poking out of every inch of his exposed skin—and two were already gleaming with drops of fresh blood.

The man looked forward again. “Sorry, I caught you with a needle, friends. My bad, you know? My Quirk, it’s so bothersome. I just can’t keep track of every single one. They’re all just… bursting to fly free.”

None of them—not Peter and Betty nor MJ and Ned—said a damn word for a full ten minutes.

By then, their new “friends” had guided them to a sketchy looking bar. It would have never made Ned’s carefully curated lists of spots, Peter knew. The seats were sticky, ants marched up the side of the wall, disappearing into a hole in the wall, and the bartender was slow. Ned paid for two rounds, and they all grimly sat with the strangers as they drank up.

It was there that Peter found out that the name of the man with the needles was Marco. The other two were Flint and Randy, but Peter never figured out which was which. The three of them kept up the friendly pretense, trying to lure Peter and his friends into conversation while also making sure none of them left their sights.

But the poorer service at this bar didn’t mean the staff were blind. The employees there soon started pointing out their table to each other. They stood out like a sore thumb, after all. Three middle aged men sitting with four college students—the men, drinking like fishes and loud. The students, stony and quiet.

When Marco picked up on their attention, he hustled them out the door and to the next bar. This happened three more times in under an hour.

Peter almost wished his friends had drank more earlier in the night. They were sober now with none of the false bravado and confidence that came with alcohol in their blood. It meant they were staying smart, but it also meant they were scared, and there was very little Peter could do about that.

Marco’s Quirk was incredibly dangerous in close quarters—and he never let them get more than an arm’s length or two away from them. The other two—Flint and Randy—said nothing about their own Quirks. The risk of pissing Marco off was calculable, but the risk of doing the same to them was not. For all Peter knew, they were both Quirkless. Or they were armed with the deadliest Quirks known to man.

Peter didn’t want to stick around and find out. The best time to change the situation was, ironically, when they were moving from bar to bar, where Peter had a whole sky to work with. But every time he thought of how to extract MJ or Ned or both from Marco without triggering Marco, he felt a thread of bone deep fear grip him. And so, he did nothing.

He did nothing for a while because of fear, then he did nothing for a while because Ned asked him to.

After they left the first stop, Ned, reeking of peppermint again, muttered ‘ _ endure _ ’ to him from the corner of his mouth. Peter, still trying to figure out a version of this scenario that didn’t put one of his friends in mortal danger, balked at this. A minute or two later, though, Peter realized Ned was right.

This was not an actual robbery attempt. In fact, the men were doing everything they could so they could plausibly deny any wrongdoing. Even the nicks with the needles (because they were just nicks) could be explained away by a physical Quirk that was clearly difficult to live and maneuver around. And although Peter and his friends rarely went anywhere without a hand on them, they were also kept in visible and highly public places. If something went wrong, there would be eyewitnesses and alibis—and not just for Peter and his friends, but for Marco too.

Poor Ned’s wallet was bearing the weight of Marco’s attention, but there was no real indication that Marco would go beyond this, even to do something as simple as steal the wallet itself. It seemed like all they wanted to do was bully a bunch of college students into giving them free alcohol, which was… still not great, admittedly. Because even a mildly bad situation could turn into a lethal one with Quirks involved. But it was something they could work with.

One of three things could happen.

One, Marco and his friends could just let them go. Either they would get bored or the bars would close—whichever happened first. It would be a bad memory they wouldn’t be eager to repeat. Peter and the rest of them would spend the next month or two paying back Ned, who would weather such an insult only because of his patents and his beloved part-time job at a bookstore.

Two, Marco and his friends could get super drunk. The less vigilant they were, the more likely Peter would be able to sneak everyone out of there. The longer they waited, the lesser the risk would be—although there was always a risk that they’d miss the best timeframe. Time made drinking people drunker, but it made them sober too if they slowed down.

Or three—and this was the least favorable—they did something to immediately escalate the situation. This could happen if one of them slipped away or Ned’s card was declined or they purposefully chose to cause a scene at the next stop. Who knew what would happen then? Ideally, Marco, Flint, and Randy would run, but that too would become less likely the more they drank.

Endure, Ned said. They needed to endure.

Things came to a head during the fifth stop. The four of them were hustled into a door Peter would have never guessed was available for public access. It was then that Peter realized he might need to escalate anyway. This seedier part of the city was full of a bunch of empty storefronts and abandoned buildings. If they were being pushed into an isolated space like an empty room or a warehouse, he was going after Marco first—needles be damned.

It was fine to endure Marco’s intimidation when they were in public and when he just wanted alcohol. It wasn’t fine if they were pushed anywhere private.

Peter would have to take his chances. He probably wouldn’t survive the attempt, but Betty might be able to disappear into something. Ned and MJ would have to run. Where to, Peter didn’t know.

But the sketchy door opened into yet another establishment. A faded and stained nameplate revealed that the spot was Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Girls. What a weird name for a bar, and what a weirder set of clientele.

There were Quirks of all types around here on full display. A man at the bar lit a cigar from the burning end of a woman’s red tail. A tiny man with spiky hair floated all around the pool table, examining his shots from every angle—much to the annoyance of his minotaur-like opponent. Another man swept the floor diligently, accepting trash offerings from eager shadows. A living (breathing?) skeleton dealt a round of cards to a lively table of men and women with Quirk-related appendages representing all colors of the rainbow except blue and orange. Two tables away, a woman played a game of Five Finger Fillet with a sweating man with three eyeballs. The knife in question came out of the palm of her hand—there was no way the man was winning this.

In any case, Peter had never spent any energy imagining a place where villains might hang out freely, but this one was ticking a lot of boxes.

The only benefit to it all was the fact that the three strangers were as unfamiliar with the bar as Peter was. They seemed just as spooked by the rampant and semi-illegal Quirk use all over the place.

“Finally, a free bartender,” Betty muttered, eyes shooting off to the bar counter. “I’ve seen this on the internet. There are codes we can give him to call for help.” She was so optimistic.

“Does that look like the kind of bartender who gives a shit?” MJ hissed, her shoulders up to her ears.

Peter followed her gaze and made eye contact with said bartender. The greasy haired man looked normal compared to most of his patrons. He seemed barely awake behind his thick glasses, not even flinching when a localized thunderstorm started up over a cheating poker player.

The bartender leveled that blank, uncaring stare at Peter for a while longer before sighing heavily and ringing a pink fuzzy bell on the wall. The sound seemed to provoke a mindless cheer from the bar patrons and little else. For all Peter knew, it was a signal to start happy hour.

But time for contemplation was over. He was pulled deeper into the bar as Marco and his buddies tried to find a good place to sit. Most tables were split and damaged in some way. One table had no less than sixteen knives jabbed deep into the surface. Most of the patrons stood. Chairs were almost nonexistent, save for one table towards the very back. The largest chair there had all four legs still as well as a giant sticker of a symbol. It was a face, maybe? Two white eyes in darkness, surrounded and divided by red.

Marco sat in the chair and waited for them to catch up. “Damn, looks like there’s only enough seats for six.” Smirking, he looked at Betty. “You can sit on my lap, pretty girl.”

Next to him, Betty froze up, stiff as a board. She started shaking slightly when Marco tapped his thighs, beckoning her.

Flint—or maybe it was Randy?—tried to pull Betty closer to Marco, but MJ got there first.

“No, she will not,” she said firmly. She pushed Betty at Peter instead. Betty clutched Peter’s arm hard, pressing her forehead into his shoulder.

“Oh?” Marco asked, sounding interested. “Are you offering instead? You’ve been cold all night, princess, but I can warm you up just right.”

Endure, Ned had said. But this was going way too damn far.

“Why don’t you do us all a favor and stick your head in a garbage disposal instead,” MJ said loudly, catching the attention of the people around them.

Marco was drunk. He had been for at least the last 40 minutes, but that didn’t stop him from launching himself up to his feet. Worse, his needles loosened, dropping slightly. “You little-” He reached for MJ and-

Peter never liked the trolley problem. But the trolley problem sure did like the Parker family. Would he do nothing and let three people die? Or would he kill one person to save two?

One afternoon almost eight years ago, Ben was faced with the same situation. With his Quirk, only Ben had known for sure which consequences came with which choices—and he’d chosen to save five and let two die. He’d chosen to be shot so that others wouldn’t die. He’d chosen not to come home.

Peter didn’t have Ben’s Quirk. He had a spider Quirk instead, and, in situations like these, it gave him only the illusion of slowed time. The adrenaline that surged through him certainly contributed too. But now Peter had to make a choice.

But Peter never liked the trolley problem. He always thought that the premise was stupid. Surely such a horrible situation couldn’t happen in isolation. Surely a Good Samaritan would step in and save the people that his choice had doomed.

Surely he wouldn’t be alone.

But alone he was. Surrounded by chaos. Surrounded by choices. Challenged by the obvious threat posed by Marco’s needles. Stumped by the unknown Quirks of Flint and Randy.

Which friend was he going to protect? Which friend was he going to lose? He didn’t have the benefit of double checking the flow of time. Worse, he could make a decision and lose them anyway. He had no guarantee. He wasn’t Ben. He wasn’t a Hero. He was nobody.

Peter intensely didn’t want to make that choice, but time was ticking. He had to.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to.  _ He didn’t want to- _

“Oh. Em.  _ Gee _ ,” someone squealed behind him. Time moved forward again. Marco had stilled, eyes falling on the intruder. “Besties! You’re here! You made it! You really really did!”

Peter turned slowly, watching a six-foot-foot two wall of muscle and weapons spring on them like a cat leaping on injured prey.


	4. Chapter 4

Betty and Peter bore the brunt of the assault. If it could be an assault. It was more like an aggressive… hug?

Yes. A hug. Betty let out a soft oof as she was dragged closer to the red suited stranger. While Peter stood a better chance, it didn’t stop him from getting the side of his face smashed into taco-scented pectorals, just like Betty.

The hug was… enthusiastic? And tight. And at no point did the stranger stop enthusing over the appearance of his precious “buddies”. The man was so cheerful, Peter could practically see the sparkles in the air. It was such a massive tone shift from the rest of the night with Marco that it sent Peter reeling. He reached for the stranger’s belt automatically. But when his hands skidded over the grip of a handgun, he snatched his fingers back like they’d been burned, and he stilled, assessing this new development.

The man wasn’t just tall; he was  _ very  _ tall. He wasn’t just broad either. Every bit of him was wide, muscled, and firm. The leather and Kevlar of his red and black suit didn’t hide his musculature one bit. It did a better job hiding his face. He wore a full red and black mask from the top of his skull down to his neck—and not a bit of skin showed anywhere. Without those strangely animated white eyes and those exaggerated facial expressions, the man could have been entirely inscrutable.

Though that didn’t seem to match his personality, did it?

The stranger stopped squeezing Peter and Betty so hard, looking up as if just noticing the rest of them. “Oh? Who are these strapping young men?” The man’s perky voice dropped to a low, rumbling octave. “Friends, perhaps?”

Peter’s warbling and abused danger sense bleated out a tiny warning. He tensed. But his so-called spidey sense wasn’t alerting him to the hugger.

No, it was fully aimed at Marco.

All throughout the night, Marco had been careful not to disturb the balancing act between them and Peter’s friends. But now, startled and drunk and still annoyed at MJ, Marco was clearly agitated, aggressive, and willing to pick a fight. Even with a man packing at least two swords, two guns, and what felt like a grenade.

“Back off. They were with us first, freak,” he said, advancing on the three of them menacingly. The needles poking through his skin rippled ominously, and Peter felt a shadow of the trolley problem rear its ugly head.

The stranger seemed far less impressed. “Wow.” He dragged out the word into ten different syllables before leaning forward. “Say, do you have a broken nose, buddy?”

This made Marco pause. “…No?”

“Would you like one? No? How about a prison sentence instead?” Behind Peter, the stranger’s arm twisted so that the back of his hand was on full display. Whatever Marco saw there was more intimidating than the actual weapons; he froze and turned bone white. 

When the stranger spoke again, there was a smile in his voice. An unkind one. “Beat it. These are my baby Heroes now.”

MJ, seeing an opportunity, grabbed Ned’s arm. She dragged him closer to the stranger. “They were just leaving,” she said firmly, putting distance between them and Marco.

Between that, whatever the stranger was doing, and the unwanted attention from the bar crowd, the jig was up. Marco seemed to realize that. His face twisted and he ran a hand through his hair, looking at his friends before shooting the five of them a sneer. “Whatever. They were lousy company anyways,” he said like he hadn’t dragged them with implied force every step of the way.

With that parting shot, he stalked towards the bar door, friends in tow, and, just a little bit, Peter’s chest loosened from the vice that gripped it for hours. He felt lightheaded.

“Thanks, mister,” Betty said in a mumbled breath, pushing out of the hug. She backed up into Ned, and they held each other briefly.

“No biggie,” the stranger said, friendly again, his grip slackening into nonexistence. Because Peter himself had yet to step back, the man kept a casual arm on his shoulder. “I can smell a bully from a mile away.”

“Didn’t think we’d find a Pro Hero in a place like this,” MJ said leadingly.

Was that what he was? That explained Marco’s reaction. He must have been the target of the Pro Hero equivalent of flashing a police badge. As someone who was using his Quirk to menace and subdue citizens, even for a goal as petty as free drinks, a Pro Hero was probably the last thing Marco wanted to see that night.

But what Pro Hero was he? Peter looked his savior over a little more closely…

“This is not your average watering hole,” the stranger said amiably. “So, just curious, do they  _ not _ teach you common sense in Hero school? You’d figure it would be the very first class. How Not To Get Killed 101.”

They were being lectured now. Peter could tell, but it barely penetrated his brain. He was still riding the high of getting away, of not losing any of his friends. But that wasn’t the case for MJ. Her temper was already flaring visibly, and a scowl had fixed itself to her face.

And the Pro Hero wasn’t done. He reached out with his free hand, tweaking the lanyard hanging from MJ’s neck. She snatched it—and her school ID—back from him instantly. “Who goes drinking wearing their school swag?” he continued mockingly. “You’re just asking to be jumped by villains. You’re lucky they walked into  _ my _ territory and sat in  _ my _ chair. Otherwise, you-” The man dragged his eyes away from MJ, looking at Peter for the first time. Then he paused.

“You…” he said quieter, the word dropping off towards the end. He was staring at Peter, and obviously so. “You,” the man said again, decisive this time. His arm slid off of Peter’s shoulder as he leaned back. He took an entire step back, fanning his face.

“Holy fucking  _ shit _ , Batman. Did it hurt?”

Peter was confused. “Did what hurt?” He was not in the half of his friend group that got hurt tonight, thanks.

The white eye slits of the man’s mask creased in a friendly way. “When you fell from heaven, of course!”

Next to Peter, Ned choked so hard, someone started banging on his back. Peter’s eyebrows jumped up. The Pro Hero didn’t pay attention to anything else around them, instead choosing to stick his hand between the two of them. “The name’s Wilson. Wade Wilson. Shaken not stirred. Also, I’m Deadpool.”

Well, that answered that question. Not that Peter knew who Deadpool was anyway. Smiling though, still grateful for the unorthodox man’s interference, Peter took Wade’s hand and shook it. That was when he finally saw what Marco had seen—the Pro Hero brand on the back of Wade’s glove. The sight of the symbol of the Central Hero Agency spurred another surge of relief. Wade was right. They had been so incredibly lucky.

Peter beamed. “I’m Peter Parker,” he said. Not the best introduction, but…

“Oh my lord,” Wade whispered. He wiped a nonexistent tear from his face, visibly moved. Reminded abruptly of the casual pickup line, Peter blushed. “Have mercy on me, beautiful.”

If Peter turned any redder, he was going to pass out. He was speechless. No one ever flirted with him. No one. And yet here Wade was. Flirting and grinning widely behind that mask of his, those white eyes fixated on him. It was so unprecedented. And really, really nice? He wanted to jump out a window or do a backflip, and he wasn’t sure which urge was stronger—the one that had him running away or the one that had him working off some excess energy so he could act like less of an awkward mouth breather.

“If you’re quite done feeling up my friend,” MJ said darkly. Reminded of himself, Peter finally pulled his hand free of Wade’s. They’d been giving each other a handshake the entire time. How embarrassing. “Could you tell us what this place is?”

“It’s a terrible place for terrible people,” Wade said, never looking away from Peter. “Baby Heroes shouldn’t be here.”

“Are you really going to say that when you were here first?” MJ pressed, her arms crossed.

“I don’t just rub shoulders with terrible people. I  _ am  _ terrible people.” Wade gazed at him a little while longer. Then he booped Peter’s nose. “If I had a Quirk that let me rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.”

“That was terrible,” Ned hissed.

Peter waved an absent hand in his direction. “Don’t stop him,” he complained in a whisper.

Wade seemed to light up under that mask of his. Despite MJ’s attempts to part them, he got close again and clapped both hands on Peter’s cheeks, making a cooing sound. Gentle palms on a body outfitted for war. What a study in contradictions. While Wade gleefully smushed Peter’s face to resemble a fish more than a man, someone came up from behind him.

She was a beautiful woman. She was bronzed, strong, and smiling, and she had a full head of inky, springy curls. She was armed like Wade was, minus the swords, and she had a faint splash of vitiligo over one eye. She cleared her voice once.

_ Please don’t be his girlfriend _ , Peter thought. Wade barely reacted to this interference.

“Not now, Dom. I’m basking,” Wade said happily. In what?

“Keep it PG-13, Wade.”

Wade scoffed at this, letting Peter go finally. “What is this, a Christmas release?”

He half turned to face her, and, in that movement, the woman pushed him aside, joining their incomplete circle of students with a friendly expression. “Hi, I’m Dom. I work with this idiot. I saw what was happening, no need to explain. Also, I had a hunch and checked on things and, well…” She crossed her arms over her chest, a regretful frown passing over her face. “Sorry, Baby Heroes. You can’t leave just yet. I know it’s been a long night, but your buddies are waiting outside. Probably thought you’d run out, so… Hang out here a while? I’ll buy you some food, and I’ll lean on the chef to make sure he’s on his best behavior.”

Though Wade had been the one to chase off Marco in the end, it was Dom who was the greater balm to the group. Where he’d riled them up again, Dom employed a textbook-perfect tone, expressing empathy and firmness while also setting a course for the next steps. She would have gotten an A+ in their Search and Rescue course.

Even though they knew her playbook backwards and forward, having trained in it themselves, MJ and Ned visibly relaxed. Betty did too, caught up in the hope and clarity that a competent Pro Hero effortlessly brought to the scene.

Wade was visibly pouting. “Is that a charitable spirit I sense? How unusual for you.” He was bunched up into himself, his shoulders up to his ears and his hands stuck under his armpits.

“I hate watching Baby Heroes get fucked over,” she said bluntly. She shot him a wide, curling smile. “Besides, I just won five hundred bucks. Let me indulge myself, boss.”

Wade grumbled something, rubbing the back of his neck before marching off to the back kitchen.

-

As it turned out, the chef was Wade. Or perhaps Wade hip bumped the chef into the trash, taking over—it wasn’t entirely clear which was true. Either way, Wade whipped up a bunch of burritos and tacos in the back, much to the interest of other bar patrons, who he ignored entirely.

Dom and Wade ended up eating with them too. Peter chowed down on more tacos than was probably polite, but after the night he’d had, he was ravenous. All that stress with no outlet.

The six of them sat at the table that had once provoked the height of Peter’s anxiety, but the vibe couldn’t have been more different. Marco was gone, after all, and conversation ran freely. Dom was engaging, and Wade, though clearly a chatterbox, was quieter around her. He also didn’t eat very much. He seemed to only take bites when no one was looking. And, because Peter was looking, well… he wasn’t eating much at all.

Wade took off one of his gloves exactly once to clean off a grease stain. Through the corner of his eye, Peter saw raised patches of burns and scars, heavily damaged knuckles, and thick, callused fingers. Wade hastily hid it away.

Peter didn’t think much of it. Pro Heroes gathered injuries like hardcore baseball fans collected memorabilia—quickly, intensely, and without much of a choice about where things were to be stored. But Peter’s curiosity burned.

The next thirty minutes passed quickly. Coming down from his adrenaline rush, Peter found himself going from full alertness to extreme sleepiness. He struggled to stay awake, thankful that no one was requiring him to speak. The topic they had landed on was schooling. Domino had apparently gone to a different Hero school in Chicago when she was growing up. All four of them were having a lively conversation, comparing notes on each of their three institutions. Wade joked that he was a graduate of the “school of hard knocks” but would explain no further, browsing on his phone instead.

About fifteen minutes later, Dom walked out of the bar and walked back in, giving them a thumbs up. Marco and his buddies were gone. MJ almost knocked over her chair in her eagerness to stand. She was ready to leave.

They followed suit and said their goodbyes to Dom, who drifted off to cajole a tall older man into a game of pool, her eyes gleaming. Another bar patron came up to Wade and muttered something in his ear before they could say anything. Ned went up to the bartender to settle the bill, only to find that Dom had kept her word. The bartender pointed them to a truly disgusting one-man bathroom when Betty politely asked for it, and so, with great reluctance, they took turns using it.

“You were going to fight Shitty McGee, weren’t you?”

Peter snapped his attention back to Wade. He was waiting on Ned to finish and so was standing by the counter. MJ and Betty were closer to the bathroom in question, heads bent over one of their phones, which meant there was no obstruction to Wade sidling in next to him, taking up a stool.

Damn. Even seated, Wade was taller than him.

After a little less than an hour of Peter surreptitiously looking at him, Wade was the one watching him now, his jaw propped up by the heel of his palm. And maybe Wade was seeing more than Peter was ready for him to see.

“His Quirk is dangerous,” Wade explained unnecessarily. “That’s why he’s shitty.”

Peter didn’t say anything at first. He’d let his guard down. Wade had interspersed jokes with flirtatious overtures—and Peter hadn’t hated it. Instead, he’d tucked that bright, surprised,  _ shy _ feeling into himself, flipping it over and over again. But at the end of the day, Peter was a vigilante, and he’d been ready to throw hands in the middle of Sister Margaret’s—lethal needle Quirks be damned, and Wade had seen all of that. He’d clocked their plight almost immediately and had understood how to extract them without bloodshed.

What else did he read into Peter? Was it so obvious that Peter’s only solutions to things were to run or to fight? Should he try to explain?

No. No, he shouldn’t. It was Wade’s responsibility to drag him into custody and de-mask him for the world to see. Peter wasn’t going to admit that he was about to break the law to a Pro Hero. He wasn’t stupid.

So Peter focused on the other half of Wade’s observation, purposefully obtuse. “He’s not shitty because of his Quirk,” he said firmly. “Quirks don’t make people good or bad. Actions do.”

“That’s cute. But see here, lovely boy, what on earth is a guy supposed to do with a Quirk that throws shards of death besides…. You know.  _ Throwing shards of death at people _ .”

“No one is destined to be a bad guy,” Peter argued, facing him fully. “Or a good guy, for that matter. Both of those require work. Actions.  _ Choices _ .”

“And what kind of good would your choice have been tonight, little Hero?”

Peter’s mouth twisted. His eyes dropped down to the symbol branded into the leather of Wade’ glove. He didn’t answer.

“Okay then,” Wade said easily. “Look. I have one piece of advice to give you. From one Pro Hero to a future colleague.”

“Don’t advertise that I’m from a Hero school while inebriated. Got it.”

Wade cocked his head, considering that. “I have  _ two _ pieces of advice for you,” he revised humbly. Peter bit on a small smile. He lost it a second later. “Lone wolves die quickly in this world of ours. Instead of assuming you’re the only solution, the only one with a responsibility, the only one who can act, maybe… look around a bit? There are more allies in the woodwork than you know.”

Peter didn’t say anything about that. Instead, he thought of the staff at the bars who’d noticed their plight and started talking. He thought of when he made eye contact with Wade’s greasy bartender. He thought of Dom gradually calming his friends down. Of Wade pulling him and Betty in close protectively.

How many more people had picked up on their distress? How many more people could have helped?

How much sooner could this horrible night have ended if he looked for the helpers rather than assuming he was the only source of help?

“Solo hero acts get people killed, you know.”

“I get it,” Peter said quietly, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to jump in and protect your friends, sweetheart,” Wade continued, “but there is something wrong with cutting a promising life short.” He winked. “And, no, I’m not just saying that because you’re cute.”

Peter stayed quiet for a while, absorbing this. He didn’t usually take criticism well, especially one so precise, but this one hit just a little different.

Spider-Man had had more than his fair share of life-threatening scrapes. He’d been shot at, gutted, impaled, set aflame, and smashed against a building. He’d sprinted and dashed to a crisis only to find dead bodies waiting for him. He’d held up a collapsing road only to hear that, while he’d saved 20 people, 10 others died. He was no stranger to the cruel crush of a life or death situation.

He’d just never had to deal with one as boring old Peter Parker—and never with people he actually knew.

It was quite chilling to know you could put your entire body in front of a loved one—you can sacrifice your whole life—and still know that there was no guarantee they were getting out alive. Peter’s only recourse that night was to follow Ned’s Quirk-inspired suggestion to endure. But Ned’s Quirk was insight, not precognition, and it had fallen apart when Marco crossed a line. Who knew what the fallout of that conversation would have been without the interference they’d gained from certain Pro Heroes?

In any case, Peter was certain of only one thing: he didn’t lose any friends tonight because of Wade and Wade alone.

Spider-Man had been useless. Paralyzed. Indecisive.

And very, very scared.

Noticing Wade was watching him still, Peter finally smiled. “You’re good at this. Giving advice, I mean. You’re very… understanding. Does your agency work with schools?” Maybe if he had more people like Wade and Dom in his upbringing, he wouldn’t be so angry and resentful all the time. Maybe he wouldn’t hate the dynamics of Pro Hero society as much. Maybe he wouldn’t have become a vigilante in the first place.

Wade made a face. “Hell no, sunshine! Do you even know who we are?” Peter shook his head. Wade pointed a thumb at his chest, grinning broadly. “I’m the head honcho of the Deadpool Corps. Not that the title matters—either of them, really. My agency is a democracy, despite my best efforts. Anyhoo, speaking of which, you said your name is Peter Parker, right?” He sat up, digging in his pockets. He pulled out a pen and a receipt. “Let me know when the timing is right, and I’ll put a bid in for you for an internship.”

Wade got through the second P in Peter’s name before Peter caught his wrist, halting him. “Support Track doesn’t do annual Hero internships.” Not like Hero Track. Support Track only allowed one internship for extra credit, and Peter had already used his up. And Wade ought to know what he was dealing with here. Peter was never going to be a future equal.

But Wade just sighed. “Yet another failure of the American educational system.” Seemingly unbothered by this revelation, he finished writing out Peter’s last name. He polished it off with a doodled heart.

Something stiff in Peter’s neck loosened. He smiled uncertainly and opened his mouth.

But before Peter could act on the feeling, the greasy bartender slid over. “I called you over to chase out a troublemaker, not to flirt with a bunch of college students,” he said.

Wade turned his attention to the man. “I can multitask, Weasel,” he protested. The two of them launched straight into full on bickering, like bitter siblings who only got along every other week.

Peter didn’t get a chance to speak with Wade any further, as Ned was headed his way, the girls in tow. He didn’t really even get to say good-bye either, and it wasn’t until the four of them walked out of the bar that he was struck with the feeling of a truly missed opportunity.

It was well past midnight, and the formerly cool air had taken on a bite that hinted at the looming winter. They grouped together loosely, shoulder to shoulder, none of them dressed in anything thicker than a thin jacket.

As Ned called in an Uber, Peter chewed over what happened some more, trying to negotiate with the bitter sense of disappointment in his gut. His mind kept jumping back to Wade. Strange, wry, irreverent Wade. He’d called Ned “Nedward”, Betty “Beebs”, and MJ “Mary Jane Watson” with the smug air of someone with an inside joke.

But Peter? He was called sunshine. Lovely. Sweetheart.  _ Cute _ . And the way Wade had said them too; his voice low, almost like he was sharing a secret. That had to mean something. The flirting had to  _ mean  _ something. Except… the point of flirting with a stranger was to get their number, and Wade had never asked for it.

Then again, Peter had just had a horrible night. And he himself never offered.

Peter almost smacked himself in the face. Making his excuses, he doubled back to the bar in a jog, pushing his way through the door so quickly that he almost took out another patron.

Wade was where Peter had left him. The bartender was further down the counter, cleaning up a spill. Hunched over, Wade was sliding a shot glass full of whipped cream and alcohol from palm to palm with a heavy sigh. He looked dejected.

From behind Wade’s right shoulder, Peter asked bluntly, “Do you want my number?”

Startled, Wade shrieked. He batted his shot glass too hard, sending it flying down the counter. Peter immediately dropped his hand to the bartop to stop it, but it wasn’t worth the save. The glass was fine, but the contents of the shot splashed over the palm of his hand.

“I’m not making you another blowjob, fucker,” said the bartender, not looking up from his task. Wade made a noise like a choking cat before swiveling around to face Peter.

“Is that what this is called?” Peter licked the taste of whipped cream and alcohol off of his palm. Ick.

Wade tracked his tongue for a moment before meeting his eyes. “This is karma, isn’t it?”

Peter was too tired for subtlety. “Do you want my number or not?”

Wade stared at him for a moment, as if seeking something in his expression. What he found, Peter didn’t know, but he didn’t like where it took Wade.

“You’ve had a bad night. And… you’re drunk!”

That ship had sailed several hours ago, but Peter didn’t feel like explaining. “So what?”

“So… maybe giving me your number isn’t the best choice,” Wade said slowly, as if explaining this to a small child.

Peter scowled at him. “You’re the one who flirted with me first.”

Wade scowled back at him. “And you’re the one giving me those big baby blue eyes…!”

What? “My eyes aren’t blue.”

Wade waved a hand. “Meh. Depends on the colorist for the issue. And the actor, I suppose.” He clasped both hands under his chin, expression intensifying. “ _ Wait. _ Isn’t this a pivotal decision point in this story of ours? If I say yes, will the story continue on for another six chapters? Or will it end? Are we endgame or am I a stepping stone to the real OTP? Do I even get a happy ending?!” Turning away, he covered his eyes with his hand dramatically, cringing. “Quick, check the tags. I can’t bear to do it myself.”

Peter didn’t have the wherewithal to respond to that. Or even absorb it. If this was an extended metaphor, he was lost as to where it started. Or ended. So he said nothing instead.

Fortunately, Wade didn’t let that stop him. He hauled in a deep breath and turned back to Peter, reaching out, his palm facing the ceiling. “Fine. Gimme your phone, cutie pie.”

Yes! Success. Peter almost threw it at him, he was so nervous.

Even so, Wade didn’t make it easy. After having Peter enter his password, he made Peter turn his back. Peter did so with only the slightest bit of hesitation, listening intently for the telltale taps of numbers and letters being entered into his contacts.

Before doing that, though, Wade took a selfie. The flash startled Peter. When he turned around again, Wade was quickly programming his phone with his information. His mask was untucked slightly around his neck.

He abruptly pushed the phone into Peter’s chest, not looking at him. “There, you win. Have my deets. But don’t look at your image gallery just yet. Don’t text me tonight either. Sleep on it. Sober up.” Wade dragged his gaze back to Peter. “And if you’re tempted to text me tomorrow, look at my selfie first.” His expression was grim.

“Why does that matter?” 

Wade grinned wildly. The mask contorted with it, and so did his voice. “It matters because the ugly is all over, inside and out!” After a beat, Wade’s expression gentled a little. His volume dropped low, only loud enough for the two of them to hear. “And I already like you too much to live tweet your reaction to my adoring fans.”

As if that wasn’t weird enough, Wade stood then, unfolding his tall body from the short stool. He patted the top of Peter’s head once before falling into a dead sprint to the private room in the back. The door shut behind him.  _ Employees Only _ , it said.  _ No Peters Allowed _ , it might as well have said.

What a strange guy.

Triumphant—but perplexed—Peter made his way out of the bar again. He’d only been gone for a few minutes, and they were still waiting on the ride. From twenty feet away, Peter could hear Ned dutifully reporting the ETA of their way home.

Betty, on the other hand, was scanning the sidewalk with a renewed vigilance. Her eyes fell on him and his approach. “There he is!”

“You’re really wandering off after the night we’ve had?” MJ groused, hugging herself. It was starting to get even colder.

“It was just for a minute,” Peter said defensively. “Besides, I got his number.”

“Whose number?” Ned asked, looking up from his screen.

Peter lifted up his own phone. It was too tempting to unlock it. “Wade Wilson,” he said.

Betty twitched. Her hand shot up to grab his wrist. It was almost like she wanted to take his phone, but she stopped halfway, looking as confused as he felt.

“What is it?” MJ asked, stepping closer to her. They’d become friendlier before Marco, Peter knew, but that horrible shared experience did more to move things along than a single chat could. And now, prickly MJ, slow to befriend and slower to trust, was feeling protective over Betty. And obviously so.

Betty looked rattled. “It’s… nothing. Just…” She looked away, her eyebrows needling together. “Half of a memory.”

“The only cure I know of for bad memories is more alcohol,” MJ said with some humor. “After tonight, that might not be what you want to hear, but…” She trailed off.

“Only the finest of boxed wines at  _ Chateau Leeds _ ,” Ned promised gallantly.

“Oh. Promising,” MJ said, playing along.

“We’ll take it all,” Betty said bravely. Peter tried not to sigh.

So much for not drinking.

-

Morning came faster than they’d planned. It was about three am when they finally crashed through Ned’s door. Fortunately, his persnickety roommate was gone for the weekend, so their long-awaited return wasn’t ruined by an angry classmate awakened by their too loud entry.

Ned had hit the hay almost immediately, falling asleep with enviable ease on his twin bed. Peter took up his customary place on Ned’s floor, the ground padded by blankets and pillows. MJ and Betty claimed the living room couch and, by the sound of it, spent the next several hours sitting with the box of wine, just talking. Peter fell asleep about an hour into it, their low murmuring voices like white noise for his very tired brain.

Peter woke up at ten to the sound of Ned’s ancient printer whirring. He pulled his blanket down from around his face to peer at the source of the sound. Ned’s bed was empty, the blankets haphazardly tossed in a loose approximation of “made”. In a pair of shorts and a tank top, Betty was sitting, cross legged, on Ned’s computer chair. Her eyes were wide, bright, and a strange shade of whitish blue. She seemed to be vibing with Ned’s computer station somehow.

Her arm was bent at the elbow and, as he watched, it flickered in and out of existence. But she never quite faded. Her hand was on her new necklace. She seemed peaceful but also extremely eerie.

Deciding he didn’t want to know, Peter got up quietly and left her to it.

MJ was still on the couch. He could tell that she was hungover by the way she was groaning. She was curled up into a tiny ball under her blanket, and she was bundled up so tight that all that was visible was a poof of her curly brown hair. A few feet beyond her, Ned was standing at his kitchenette, bent at the waist, swearing quietly and trying to find a frying pan. If the food on the counter was any clue, he had a big menu in mind for his guests.

Guilt twisted Peter’s gut. He really had to pay Ned back for last night. He hadn’t kept track, but Marco probably swindled three to four hundred bucks out of Ned. This breakfast didn’t look cheap either. Ned took pride in taking care of his friends—which was why it was so important that Ned’s friends took equal care of him.

Needing some space, Peter headed to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. He rubbed his face. Yesterday felt so far away, like a dream or a nightmare. He couldn’t believe they’d been targeted by Marco and his friends or that they’d been so easily coerced. Surely Peter could have done something more. Surely Spider-Man should have known what to do. Thank god Wade was-

_ Wade. _

Remembering what happened last night, Peter eagerly fished his phone out of his pocket, opening it up. He immediately tapped on the image gallery app, closing his eyes to prepare himself. Wade seemed to think he would need to brace himself. Peter didn’t want to think he’d react the way Wade was so sure he was going to, but a big part of him was afraid he’d do just that.  _ The ugly was all over _ , Wade had said.

Working up his courage, Peter opened his eyes and looked down at the last image in that gallery, the selfie Wade had left him.

He looked. And he looked. And he looked some more. Peter’s first thought was that Wade’s face looked like his hand, but somehow even worse.

It was jarring, that slightly blurry image. Scars rippled over damaged flesh. Some areas were red, others were purple. His skin was so damaged, it was hard to tell where one scar ended and where another began. It warped his face, turning it into something that could very easily be terrifying in a certain light. Peter couldn’t even imagine what had caused it, and, for once, he didn’t want to ask. 

Instead, he kept looking at the image, stumped. But the longer he looked at it, the more the face made sense. The more he could see past the scars.

Because Wade was more than his scars. He had a rather nice smile too. His eyes were a dark brown and creased easily into a friendly—if slightly saddened—expression. His teeth were even and straight. His jawline was nice too, as well as his chin, but Peter had already seen that through the mask.

Peter closed his eyes, trying to pair the memory of the sound of Wade’s voice with that pained smile and those knowing eyes. The effect was… definitely something he wanted to see in person.  _ Wade _ was something he wanted to see in person.

He wanted to hear his voice again. He wanted to ask him more questions about his agency. He wanted to talk about what it was like to be a Pro Hero in this skewed society of theirs. He wanted to see if Wade would continue to flirt with him, even now.

And he wanted to  _ see _ that smile in real life, unhidden.

The scars were startling, but they weren’t  _ ugly _ . They weren’t the showstopper Wade seemed to think they were, and Peter resented whoever had made him feel like they were.

Peter minimized the photo and opened up a text to Wade. Here, he paused. What should he say? Wade had exposed such a vulnerable part of himself to someone he barely knew. How did Peter follow-up with something like that?

Good morning was probably too basic. Should he reference what happened last night? Report back on his selfie-looking task? Peter was stumped.

Then Peter was yelping as a pointed white chin suddenly appeared over his phone.

“Don’t send him a message,” Betty said, inches away from him. Her white-blue eyes were still glowing, and her body was still manifesting. “Not yet.”

“Did you- did you just come out of my phone?” Peter demanded.

“Yes,” she said a matter-of-factly. She looped a set of solid fingers around his own. “Come with me.”

She pulled him out of the bathroom, bringing him back into Ned’s room. Neither Ned, busy at cooking, nor MJ, denying the existence of the light, noticed this, even though Peter was marched right past them both.

Betty released him the second they were through the threshold, sweeping up a bunch of printed documents into a neat stack. “You are Ned’s best friend. His brother, basically. You matter so much to him. He even says you’re the reason he applied to ESU. You’re important!” She clipped the stack together with a massive binder clip, spinning around to face him. “And Ned is important to me. Therefore, you are important to me.” She swallowed heavily, hugging her stack of papers. “Therefore, I am meddling.”

“There are far too many therefores in this conversation.” When this failed to spur a smile, Peter said, “So, what did we kill a small tree for?”

Betty looked down at the stack and then back up at him. Then she extended the stack to him. “The Central Hero Agency’s dossier on Wade Wilson,” she announced.

Peter jerked back like it was coated in acid. “The- what?” he demanded, his mind racing. “That- you- him…” In the hundreds of different directions his mind was going, there was one solid thread. He clung to it. “The agency. I thought you said you didn’t remember what you saw when you were trapped in the servers.”

“I don’t,” she said candidly. “Not unless I bring the files with me. But sometimes I have… shadows of a memory? Like pieces of a shredded letter. I can still read some of it, but most of it—the content, the purpose, the meaning—is gone.” She let out a shaky breath. “I remembered the agency had something on Deadpool, though I couldn’t remember what exactly. I went back this morning, found it, made a copy, and-”

“Betty,” Peter interrupted urgently, full of despair. “Betty, you hacked the  _ Central Hero Agency _ from  _ Ned’s _ computer?”

Betty looked annoyed. “No, I used Ned’s Wifi as a launching point to phase into the Central Hero Agency—and not directly either! I’m not stupid. Besides, I have yet to find someone or something that can independently find me when I’m in that state.” She tipped her chin up proudly. “I’m untraceable.”

“Betty,  _ Ned _ found you,” Peter reminded her sternly.

“No,” she said quietly. She sat on the edge of Ned’s bed, arms folding over the dossier again. “Ned heard me crying for help. There’s a difference.”

They were quiet for a minute. Then Peter, sighing, sat down next to her. “So much for those NDAs, huh?” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

Betty muttered something uncharitable about certain rude as hell government officials menacing law abiding citizens in distress. Then she offered him the dossier again.

This time, Peter took it. He looked down, already cringing at the words written in all caps. Confidential. For your eyes only. Redacted. It was a felony, at least, to even be handling this, he was sure. And yet, now that it was in his hands, he itched to start digging through it. Betty had dropped a gold mine’s worth of information on his lap, far beyond what he could have found even with some pointed Googling.

“My job here is done,” Betty said a little breathlessly before launching herself off the bed. She went for the door.

“Why, Betty?” Peter asked.

She paused in the threshold before turning. “Like I said. You’re important. And that guy is… complicated. The way you were looking at him yesterday was just…” Betty trailed off. She didn’t continue the thought. “Anyway, he’s difficult. Or his past is, anyway. You deserve to make an informed decision.” She nodded once to herself and, with that, headed out to the others.

Leaving Peter alone with this illicit batch of information. He held off for a moment longer before abruptly diving into Wade’s profile, ready to absorb anything and everything in it.

The story it told wasn’t a new one. Far from it.

Some Pro Heroes weren’t pros for the sake of being Heroes. Some were in it for other reasons. For instance, Pro Heroes had a blank check on Quirk usage. Most everyone else had their Quirks subjected to regulations that governed when a power could and could not be used. Even for so-called Hero Supports, this was an incredible benefit to have—and a major responsibility.

But most citizens, armed with weaker or single use Quirks, were content in these restrictions, and they made do by using their Quirk in private only or by shelling out for a limited license to use it for other purposes. Only a small percentage of folks pursued the Pro Hero career solely for the chance to use their Quirk all the time.

No, the real draw was the pay. If you were of the Hero status, you got paid extremely well. If you were a lesser Pro Hero, well… at least the pay was consistent. Housing was offered as well, at a steep discount. There was a pension too, if you lasted long enough, and it was notoriously difficult for a Pro Hero to get fired. The public tended not to react well, regardless of the reason, so it was much more likely that the Central Hero Agency would shuffle you off into a smaller, unknown agency within its governance—out of sight, out of mind.

For a slacker with a powerful Quirk and no fear of villains, it was a tempting career path.

It was a tempting career path for villains and villain-leaning civilians too, and the Central Hero Agency knew it. Whether they called it “rehabilitation” or “a timely intervention”, they had whole offices dedicated to recruiting and recapturing the so-called “dangerous assets”.

And Deadpool was one of them.

Peter knew a little bit about this practice. One of Peter’s bosses, J. Jonah Jameson, had been firmly opposed to recruiting and reforming people like Wade to the point of nearly causing a war over it. The target of this rant was the Avenger, Clint Barton. While Jameson had always been dismissive of Natasha Romanoff (calling her “that Russian asset” rather than her code name, Black Widow), he went almost apoplectic when he found out that friendly, easygoing, crowd favorite Hawkeye also had somewhat of a villainous origin himself.

Furious, Jameson had published article after article, ripping into the practice as well as Hawkeye himself. It was the first time in a long time that the Daily Bugle passed on “Spider-Man, The Menace” stories, which, at the time, made Peter feel relieved.  _ Sorry, Hawkeye. _

But while tarnishing the reputation of a vigilante was okay, going after an established Pro Hero—and an Avenger, no less—was not. They lost so many advertisers as a result.

On top of that, right before Peter quit, Jameson had gotten himself invited to a news piece on the subject. On television, he famously opined that painting over a tiger’s stripes didn’t mean it was any less of a blood thirsty tiger, ready to bite the hand that fed it. “A villain is a villain,” he’d ultimately concluded. The raging debate that followed forced the Daily Bugle to close its doors for good. But it was great for Jameson’s book sales, allegedly.

In any case, Peter hadn’t agreed with him then, and he certainly didn’t agree with him now. But knowing someone who’d been through it himself made things a little different. Made it a little more real, maybe?

Frowning, Peter read on.

The dossier described a younger Wade Wilson with promising words. While he had an attitude and persistent problems with authorities, Wade responded extremely well to training. But his Quirk (perfect reflexes) was deemed too mundane to hone into a Pro Hero where he was born. So, instead, he joined the military, excelling at every challenge given to him.

A picture with the dossier showed an extremely handsome, boy-next-door type wearing military fatigues. Peter recognized the smile only. The next six pages were heavily redacted, having been scanned into the system only after words and phrases were obscured.

But Peter was able to read enough to know that Wade’s skills had only grown stronger. Through his time in the military, he’d developed enough stamina and skills to make his Quirk truly powerful, and his successes on missions proved that a hundred times over. While they acknowledged that he was still mouthy and insubordinate, his superior officers called him the shining star of Special Forces. Wade was useful.

But perhaps not useful enough. One of Wade’s supervisors volunteered him for a Quirk enhancement program referred to only as Weapon X. Their method amounted to little more than pumping their victims with untested drugs and torturing them for hours. They claimed that these extreme stressors would awaken a repressed “secondary Quirk” that would be much more powerful than the first, and that their victims would thank them afterwards.

In reality, the program didn’t last long, and most of the victims died. Wade was one of the rare survivors, having developed a freak Quirk in response to one of the many chemicals pumped into his system. In addition to his perfect reflexes, he had developed an extreme healing Quirk so far out there in scope and capability that the dossier went as far as to call him immortal. And the first thing Wade did with his secondary Quirk was turn on his torturers. 

He murdered them all.

But he didn’t just murder them. He hunted down every offshoot, beneficiary, and partner of the program, crossing international waters to do so. He even killed the superior officer who had volunteered him, inadvertently exposing a plot that tied Weapon X, the Canadian military, and HYDRA together. But Wade didn’t stop there. He let the Canadian version of the Central Hero Agency deal with that mess. Instead, he kept following every lead and every bread crumb in his quest, and he was absolutely merciless.

It was estimated he’d killed up to four hundred people, and, by the end of it, he’d made many enemies. His enemies—both criminal and state-sponsored—wasted no time trying to end him as a result. At its peak, they thought he was the target of at least one assassination attempt a week—an impossible endeavor, given his new Quirk.

Criminal empires and villain alliances wised up first, ultimately choosing to ignore the damage Wade had done to their allies. It was the governments and the Pro Heroes who took the longest to adapt. Attempt after attempt after attempt to kill him failed. Similar attempts to imprison him instead fell through as Wade escaped in increasingly ludicrous ways.

Then, about five years ago, the US wised up and offered a different treat—an expunged record, a Pro Hero license, and a steady and generous paycheck. They’d make a deal with Canada to take him out of the hot seat. They’d mop up his reputation and all he had to do was pledge his service in the name of the New York Central Hero Agency.

It must have been an extremely tempting offer for Wade. He would no longer be on the run. He would be welcomed back into society. And he would even have some measure of authority and respect in his new home, for what service worker did the American public love better than their army of Pro Heroes? Naturally, he accepted, earning himself a citizenship by doing so.

The rest of the dossier was a collection of notes about the work Wade had put into rebuilding his life. He didn’t make it easy on himself. Or others, for that matter. Despite turning over this new leaf, he made a nuisance of himself in that first year. He got kicked out of no less than seven different agencies before he created the Deadpool Corps and recruited his own brand of misfits. Deadpool Corps—or X-Force, as it was named in the official incorporation document—was notoriously chaotic and tended to get its assignments directly from Alexander Pierce, the head of the Central Hero Agency in the state.

While it had high scores for successfully completed assignments, public comments against the group’s tactics were frequently sour. Wade’s team, despite tackling some truly life-ending and even apocalyptic missions, was not well embraced by the world. The one positive note common across the years was Wade’s unusually high success rate in recruiting villains and villain-leaning civilians into taking part in Pro Hero activities.

_ It takes one to know one _ , someone had written in the notes. Peter didn’t spare the time wondering if the comment was denigrating or just factual. Instead, he thought about Wade’s quick offer to give Peter an internship yesterday despite knowing Peter was about to break the law.

In some ways, Wade was taking his second chance and trying very hard to give it to others—and that, in Peter’s mind, was far more heroic than the slacker Pros who were in it just for the paycheck.

Peter thumbed through the dossier quickly, skimming the rest of the information. He’d been wracked by a series of strong emotions reading this: worry, fear, approval, disapproval, and sadness.

The only feeling that remained was guilt.

Peter had been glad to read this. He had chosen to do so, and it had answered more questions than Peter had known he’d had. But that didn’t stop him from feeling dirty about it. Everyone Googled everyone, but few had access to a friend like Betty.

If Wade really was trying to turn over a new leaf, what right did Peter have to take a fine-toothed comb to his past and judge him for it? But, at the same time, Wade’s history was hard to swallow. Peter couldn’t even name four hundred people, and yet more than that had died under Wade’s sword. Had they all truly deserved it? Was there not a single one of them that could have turned back to the light, as Wade had? Peter couldn’t say.

The ugly was all over, Wade had said. Maybe he meant it this way too.

Peter set the dossier aside. Instead, he stared at his phone. He reopened the picture of Wade and stared at that too. Wade had made it very easy for Peter to lose his number and never see him again. Would Peter take him up on it?

After a moment’s consideration, Peter’s thoughtful frown turned into a scowl. No.

No, he wouldn’t do that. Wade hadn’t judged him on the journey Peter was taking, even if he didn’t know the bulk of it. He’d expressed empathy and kindness instead. And although Peter couldn’t—wouldn’t—ever justify Wade’s past actions, Peter wasn’t going to judge him on his journey either. Not when the man was trying so hard to be good. Not when the man was trying so hard to make it easier for others to be good with him.

Peter owed him that. He owed him more than that.

Peter opened up his camera app and took a quick selfie. It wasn’t the best angle, an inch higher than he would have liked. He looked drained and tired. His hair was a mess. Clearly still wearing last night’s clothes, he even had a pillow crease on his left cheek.

But he didn’t take another one. Instead, he attached it to a text and sent it off.  _ Selfie for a selfie. Hope you’re having a good morning. _

Sighing, Peter dropped the phone on Ned’s bed and stood up. Figuring he’d work out the rest of his complicated feelings later, he stretched and walked out the door.

A second later, his phone gave him a friendly little chirp. Pretenses gone, Peter ran back to it and the waiting response.

Huh. Maybe his feelings weren’t so complicated after all.


	5. Chapter 5

As angry as he often got with Pro Heroes, Peter had been a beneficiary of their kindness more than once. Matt Murdock had plucked him out of quite a few dangerous situations in those early days, and, once, Jean Gray pretended to lose her contacts when Peter very stupidly webbed up a robber in front of her. Clint Barton shared half of a pizza when he caught Peter staking out a warehouse that he himself was surveilling. A flying Thor good-naturedly let Peter hang on his (very muscular) arm when Hydro-Man put the city under ten feet of water five years ago, and Steven Strange hid Peter in his Sanctum Sanctorum when Rumlow, a Central Hero Agency agent, was out for his blood.

And those were just a handful of interactions over the years. No one could claim that NYC’s best and brightest didn’t at least have a passing knowledge of his existence. If they agreed with everything that the Central Hero Agency mandated, he would have been arrested, unmasked, and charged within the first month of him taking to the streets. But a handful of Pro Heroes actively looked the other way so that a vigilante could do what they weren’t allowed to do… That wasn’t a fix to  _ any _ of their problems.

But it wasn’t like Peter was brimming with solutions here either. All he knew was that Captain Marvel could take out half of his rogues gallery during a single lunch break. Was she overkill? Sure. Peter knew there was something to be said about not bringing a grenade to a thumb war, but the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction.

Pro Heroes, in their original form, were supposed to be part of the fabric of the community.  _ From the neighborhood, to the neighborhood, for the neighborhood  _ was the slogan of the first Pro Hero agency in Queens. But things had changed since then. Instead of having an adequate scattering of Pro Heroes to serve all New Yorkers, Pro Heroes were all mandated to have their headquarters in Manhattan. Instead of responding equally to all residents regardless of who they were, Pro Heroes were disproportionately deployed to the wealthiest parts of the city. Instead of having authority to act independently to evolving situations, Pro Heroes had to beg for permission and wait for the right paper to be signed.

And there was very little that active Pro Heroes could do about it.

Some of them had spoken out about it, of course. Pro Heroes were, by nature, headstrong people. But at the end of the day, Pro Heroes were taxpayer funded, and the Central Hero Agency held all the purse strings.

And they just loved cutting people off.

The Fantastic Four saw this firsthand. Eight years ago, Reed Richards made the mistake of speaking out to the media. He’d famously stated that the Agency was more interested in “consolidating a private army of superhumans” rather than making any “progress, investigation, or even a half-hearted attempt” in resolving the socioeconomic issues at the root of villainy and other criminal behavior. The Agency’s response was swift, and the Four had to scramble to find alternative operating funds. It took them the better part of five years to restabilize, and they had been the  _ lucky _ ones. Many other agencies would have had to close their doors under similar circumstances.

But others were vocal too. In fact, Steve Rogers once had plenty to say about it after he was unfrozen, though that hardly mattered any more. While still an active Pro Hero, he was rarely seen in public. The rest of the Avengers, with their rebellious origins, had been similarly muzzled, with perhaps the exception of Tony Stark. But even Stark curbed his tongue around the Agency, treading carefully with the caution of someone who was always aware he was under their thumb.

Of all the American Pro Heroes Peter knew of, Captain Marvel was probably under their thumb the least. Her work in the universe far predated the Agency’s awareness of the mutation of her Quirk, and Carol could always be counted on for a rude comment on the stupidity of American traditions. But her influence was minimal; she was only on Earth for about five weeks of the year and often came across as behind the times. She steadily maintained her bewilderment at the Central Hero Agency’s attempts to dictate her missions, and she was quoted to have thought that the Agency threw her a Pro Hero license not out of recognition of her efforts in space, but out of cold, unadulterated fear.

Captain Marvel. Captain America. The Four.  _ Tony freaking Stark _ . If Pro Heroes like them couldn’t change Pro Hero Society from the inside out, what good could Peter do in the long run?

He always liked to think he was like the man from the parable about starfish—saving the world one person and one moment at a time. But it was so draining, especially when people treated him like he was as bad as the villains. And when he tried to focus on doing things the right and legal way through ESU (and his eventual Pro Hero licensing), the experience was such a painful whiplash. In a single day, he could go from saving a family of four from certain death to being told that his only future as a Pro Hero was to assist the “real” heroes out there, the ones with the right Quirks. 

His only value was in making sure the coffee kept coming. In sweeping the floors. In answering the ever-ringing phones. Peter would have been happy to work up the ladder of any Pro Hero Agency. He was far, far less happy to know that his upward mobility was permanently constrained by a flawed test given to him almost ten years ago.

In fact, he was quite angry about it. Always.

-

It had not been a great day for a certain vigilante.

Spider-Man caught a thief, but had been unable to retrieve the stolen goods from where it was thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge. A drone followed him for an hour only to fly at his face or ineffectively try to cut through his webs. He was hit by a car in Hell’s Kitchen and got yelled at by the driver for putting a dent in his hood. A pair of painfully new Pro Heroes tried to get the jump on him when he was trying to ask a tearful teenage girl where she had last seen her beloved golden retriever. And, to top it off, a seagull swooped down and stole the rest of his taco.

Not a great day at all.

Peter sat on top of the tallest building in the Meatpacking District, considering, once again, what made him seem like such a pushover to the rest of the world. Surely being a vigilante by itself should have earned him some respect, if only out of wariness. Grimacing, he pressed a hand over the spray-painted spider on his chest as his stomach rumbled ominously. Then he plucked the end of his red hoodie, lifting it up. Was that a mustard stain?

Ugh. In a world of fancy and fancier super suits, he looked like a child in a discount Halloween costume. He couldn’t wait until he had enough material to finish his new one. Slightly cheered by this thought, he pulled out his phone to flip through some of his designs. Some were certainly more… aerodynamic than others, but the real deviation was the coloring.

Peter’s very first stab at vigilante costuming was more of an attempt to blend in with the crowd than anything else—nondescript jeans, a gray hoodie, and a paintball mask. He wanted to do his thing and get out with no one the wiser. Nowadays, though, he wanted people’s attention. Well, more accurately, he wanted the  _ villains’ _ attention. Bright colors were easier to track against the backdrop of an urban environment, and Peter never wanted the bad guys to forget that the buzzkill of the day was really the smack talking vigilante in primary colors, not the victims themselves.

But maybe primary colors were not ideal? For building up public respect, that is. His courses on the topic tended to advise avoiding them, but Peter had always felt that, if you stopped an out-of-control bus from smashing into a playground full of children, surely then you’ve earned a pass from the fashion police. Even if you were bright enough to blend in with their jungle gym...

And costume design wasn’t everything, right? Look at the Punisher! The vigilante wore jeans, a skull shirt, and a beat up leather jacket fifty weeks of the year. He looked like he fell out of a Hot Topic on discount day, and no one— _ no one _ —was giving him crap about it. Then again, the guy could wear a tutu and still scare 90% of the population, easy.

It was in the eyes, Peter thought with a hum. Those dark, intense, angry eyes. Then he flexed. Or maybe it was the muscles? Peter had plenty of those. There was no way you could haul yourself from skyscraper to skyscraper without developing a set of abs. And Support Track, despite its many flaws, did keep its future sidekicks busy with mandatory physical education every week.

Or maybe it was the voice! The Punisher’s voice sounded like he gargled rocks for fun. Captain America’s voice was firm and commanding. Iron Man’s was robotic, sure, but brooked no arguments—a man clearly used to being obeyed. Wanda’s voice got super whispery and intimidating, and Peter was pretty sure he heard prim Dr. McCoy growl at someone before. Actually  _ growl _ !

Peter’s voice, on the other hand? He sang lightly under his breath as a reminder before grimacing. Nope, not even remotely intimidating.

Even Wade had a good voice, Peter remembered. It had dropped into something deep and terrifying with Marco, but Peter could barely recall it, so prone was Wade to falsettos and breaking out into song. During the few times Peter could get him on the phone, anyway. In any case, Wade never pulled what he did on Marco on Peter himself. With him, Wade’s voice was always friendly.

Always, always. Always…

Still flipping through his phone, Peter found himself lingering on a certain recent mockup of his new suit. Catching himself, he swiped quickly away. It looked far too much like Deadpool, and Peter was not a little embarrassed at his fixation. (He was a lot embarrassed.) He shot up to his feet, rattled.

An alarm went off. It was time for him to head back to class. Sighing, Peter hung his head before stepping off the side of the building to free fall. He landed on the sidewalk below almost silently. He paused, then turned his head towards a mound of trash bags piled up against an overflowing dumpster.

“Say,” he said casually to a skittish mess of blond fur trying to squeeze behind it all. It froze. The effect was almost comical, like a toddler putting on a lamp shade during a game of hide and seek. Its rump was fully exposed, a long haired tail tucking tight against similarly exposed back legs. “You wouldn’t happen to belong to a grieving teenage girl from a couple of streets up? She says she’s missing a handsome fella like you… goes by the name of Harvey?”

The half-submerged body jerked at the name. Then, slowly, that dirty blond tail started to wag, heralding the shamed—but hopeful—exodus of one smelly, goofy-faced pupper.

His phone dinged a reminder. He glanced down at it before putting it away. Ah hell. What was one missed class to a girl and her dog? At this rate, he was unlikely to see graduation anyway.

He dropped to a knee, accepting enthusiastic kisses from the missing and oh so wiggly dog.

At least Harvey had good taste.

-

Two weeks later, Peter got pulled into Victor Von Doom’s office for no apparent or obvious reason. The man’s wane assistant—a boy Peter’s age with a passing resemblance to Doom himself—caught him after his Superhuman Law and Society class, directing him to the spot with neither an explanation nor reassurance. In fact, the boy didn’t say anything at all once his message was delivered, walking on steadily with no expression on his slightly gray face.

Peter used to respect Doom quite a bit before ESU. When Peter was growing up, Doom seemed to be the only one railing against the Quirk assessment process. He argued that the then-current methods were so inaccurate and pitiful, they might as well have been spinning fortune wheels rather than truly defining the emerging Quirks in their society. Branded as a Hero Support (and resident “Sticky Hands Boy”), Peter couldn’t help but agree. His assessment hadn’t even bothered to look at his family history, and everyone knew Quirks were largely inherited. He’d appreciated Doom’s rhetoric then, relieved to hear someone else put words to Peter’s ever-growing resentment.

But that was then. Now, Peter knew Doom was fully in support in categorizing people into “greaters and their lessers”. His main concern with the process was that his own Quirk was “too superior for an ignorant definition by an unknowing third-party.” Everyone in Doom’s class learned  _ that  _ stance about five minutes into their first course. And woe was you if you asked Doom about his “telekinesis” powers. Your mistake would be reasonable, of course—Doom never walked when he could float instead—but… woe was you.

Doom was a character. People didn’t choose to be in his classes voluntarily. He just tended to be one of a handful of teachers who taught one or two classes required for graduation—and the other professors’ classes filled up extremely fast. And if students didn’t like him, well… the feeling was mutual. He held such a keen disdain for most people that it was truly surprising that he’d ended up at a Hero school, teaching future Pro Heroes.

Peter got his only C in Doom’s class. He wasn’t holding a grudge. Or, well, much of one. But he could perhaps muster up the urge to dream about having one. Not for the C, but rather for the long period he had to wait, shifting and uncomfortable, as Doom continued to type something swiftly on one of the tablets floating in front of him.

Doom’s office wasn’t terribly big from the outside, but the inside seemed to gather impossible square footage. A large floor to ceiling window threw ominous afternoon shadows over everything, including Peter’s once-professor. Naturally, there wasn’t a single chair for guests. Doom’s office hours were less of an invitation of discussion and more like a fair warning to all that he would exist in this place every Monday through Wednesday between 11 and 2. So tread carefully.

Peter shifted from foot to foot, rubbing the back of his neck restlessly. He could sit, perched on the edge of a roof, for hours, every bit of his focus and attention on matters happening below him, but standing? Here? In this place? It was rough. His skin itched and rolled like a precursor to his spider sense—but not like he was about to react to danger. Oh no. It was more like his extra sense was seizing up in this place, twitching and on the verge of delivering a powerful sneeze.

He didn’t know what was worse here—to do so physically or metaphysically. Doom had so many delicate instruments out, both magical and scientific. Even the bookshelves, Peter worried over. They were teeming with strange reads mixed in with books on all manners of science. Peter spied with growing incredulity an ancient—but pristine—copy of Isaac Newton’s  _ De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas,  _ but before his outstretched fingers could touch it, something in the room slammed.

Peter shot up to his full height, clamping his arms to his sides so they were straight up and down. Then, and only then, did he dare to look at Doom, who was considering him indifferently behind a cold, expressionless metal mask.

The man was standing now, motionless, as his tablets bobbed and weaved in front of him gently like dust motes in the wind. He crossed his arms slowly, looking at one of the tablets, then at Peter, then back at the tablets again.

“…Peter Parkinson?” he asked gruffly.

Peter nodded quickly, not correcting him. This was the teacher who taught him Battle Chemistry, after all, which was why Peter knew way too many ways to dissolve his enemies in a fight—and not enough ways to save them if things went horribly wrong. As they frequently did with volatile chemicals. “Sir-” he started to say.

“Silence,” Doom ordered, voice booming. He clasped his hands behind his back. “If I remember correctly, you are the one with an incessant need to hear his own voice. Do not indulge in this weakness here.” He seemed to swell, growing in size. “In fact, do not even  _ consider  _ wasting my time. It is far more valuable than you will ever comprehend. Do you understand?” Wide-eyed, Peter nodded. “Good. Do you know why you’re here?”

Peter nodded again, slower. Then he shook his head rapidly. Then he shrugged helplessly, flapping his arms.

“ _ Tsh. _ ” Doom looked away sharply, clearly annoyed. He floated around the table slowly, but with purpose. He stopped on the side of it. Then, oddly, he cleared his throat. “…I have been  _ tasked _ with the unfortunate responsibility of asking after your future.” With this, Doom paused, eyeing Peter expectantly.

Was this how he asked about things? There wasn’t even a hint of a question there. Then it clicked. Or so Peter thought.

“…I don’t need a mentor, sir,” Peter said, trying to break it to him gently.

“ _ Do not insult me _ ,” Doom rumbled. Abruptly, all of the tablets stopped floating in the air. Instead, they zoomed over to a set of shelves where they all slipped into a cushioned surface with the accuracy and sharpness of a blade between ribs. Without their low glow, Doom appeared even deeper in shadow than before.

And it was not an ambiance that Doom neglected to utilize to its fullest extent. He dropped down slowly until his booted heels hit the wood floor. The sound echoed almost existentially, like a door shutting closed in the face of Peter’s only salvation. Each step he took towards Peter seemed even more final, and when he stopped, they were toe to toe. Even without the floating, Doom towered.

Peter swallowed.

“All will fall,” Doom said finally. This statement seemed as inevitable as the crush of gravity. Peter fought the urge to run, and that metaphysical sneeze swelled almost to a breaking point. “Such is the nature of things. It… disappoints many here that you would choose to kneel before the time of kneeling was chosen for you.” Doom said nothing for a long moment, merely gazing down at him dispassionately, his eyes barely visible through the slits in his face mask.

Grimacing, Peter covered his nose, trying to hold his spidey sense’s reaction in as long as possible. The itching feeling was in his brain, and it felt unbelievably intense. For all of his arrogance, Doom was right. His Quirk was far more than mere telekinesis. Just as Peter’s was far more than sticky hands and a danger sense. And Ned’s was far more than a gift with tech.

The thought of Ned settled Peter. He dropped his hand. He stood up straighter. He met Doom’s eyes as best as he could through the mask. Doom was powerful, but his plight was hardly unique. 

Doom stared at him a little longer before sighing. “…I sense no great disturbance in you,” he said, perturbed. “Though your failings are many, you do not possess a weak heart, and your eyes remain clear. Although…” Doom dipped his head, staring at Peter a little closer. Peter wondered what he saw. All his hairs were standing straight up. Peter and Doom might be in the same boat, Quirk-wise, but he never did quite understand what Doom’s power was. And, hopefully, he never would.

Behind his mask, Doom finally blinked. The heaviness disappeared. The man turned, pivoting back to his desk with an unnecessary sweep of his cape. “I see. There are more roads to the end than just the one. Very well. Dismissed.”

“Sir?” Peter said to his back, still deeply confused.

“Leave my office,” Doom said, over his shoulder. “Or you will fail my class.”

In any other office with any other teacher, Peter might wryly comment that he wasn’t in any of Doom’s classes—and hadn’t, in fact, been in one for a while. But Doom was different than Dr. McCoy or Wanda or Pietro or even Beck. Peter wouldn’t put it past him to change his precious C into an F, even two years later.

So he scampered out of there, mind whirling at weak hearts, clear eyes, and great disturbances.

Doom had to be the weirdest person Peter had ever met.

-

“ _ Peter! _ ”

An hour later, Peter was still rattled over the impromptu meeting with Doom. This, he argued, was why he almost dropped his phone off the second story balcony of ESU. This was also why Peter screeched. Or so he would argue. Again. But, really, if you were going to be fair about it, part of that also had to be attributed by the sudden and unpredictable appearance of one Betty Brant.

Betty’s appearance on campus by itself wasn’t such a strange thing. She came and went freely, hanging out with them, or with Ned, or MJ by themselves. She’d been such a fixture in the last couple of weeks that people had genuinely forgotten she wasn’t an actual ESU student. In fact, Peter had seen Flash attempt to slide into her metaphorical DMs just the day before, promising to “show her the ropes” and “introduce the who’s who around this place”. He’d deflated quite a bit when Betty had bounced off to greet Ned, who was just exiting class.

So no. Her appearance itself wasn’t strange. It was more than Peter was distracted? And yes, still somewhat mildly bothered by his interaction with Doom. But mostly distracted. See, Doom had mentioned futures and weak hearts, right? Which reminded Peter of the past (and even weaker hearts), which reminded him of a text thread on his phone that was essentially going… nowhere. A text thread with Wade.

They’d been talking for roughly three weeks now, mostly with typed words but also with a handful of phone conversations here and there. And Peter (with his weak, weak heart) had noticed something off about these interactions about a week in, but he’d been trying desperately to ignore it once the pattern fully emerged.

While engaging and funny and empathetic and quick to share, Wade… never initiated anything. Ever.

Peter started the texts. Peter changed the topics. Peter made the phone calls. Wade never gave away any hint that any of this was unwanted, but…

Was he just being humored? He kept reminding himself that it was  _ Wade _ who had flirted with him first, but that incident with Marco had happened almost a month ago now. Had he imagined things then? Or was he so distraught that night that he ignored all evidence and assumed he was special? Or worse! Had he read everything correctly, but Wade was so put off by him by now that any of that initial attraction was up in smoke?

That line of thinking hurt. Obviously. The more they chatted back and forth, the more Peter wanted to get to know him, the man behind the dossier. Peter wasn’t expecting much—flirting didn’t mean anything, after all. He would have been happy to just be his friend, this Hero who loved his team and tolerated his job. This man who listened to Peter’s griping and showed him pictures of his never-ending odyssey to document the toe beans of every cat in New York. This guy who talked frankly and realistically about the downsides of Pro Heroing when everyone around Peter was talking it up. This genuinely  _ nice _ person who gave out advice and reassurances like free candy on Halloween night.

Peter didn’t expect anything, but it was  _ painful  _ to think his growing interest was one-sided, and that maybe Wade was regretting opening that door this entire time. Peter would have thought by now, flirting aside, that they were at least friendly. But friends initiated conversations with friends too, so he was back to square one, wondering if he was being humored.

But that was classic Parker stupidity, right? Overthinking and analysis paralysis. He was so sure he could work things out with Wade— _ figure _ things out with Wade—if they saw each other again in person, but every time he mustered up the urge to ask Wade to meet him somewhere, he failed. Buckled. Collapsed in on himself. 

Because the potential of what could be included both a positive reality and a negative one—and as long as Peter didn’t open up that box, he could still have all of the potential of that positive reality. It was Schrodinger’s friendship. (Or Schrodinger’s crush, depending on what Peter was feeling that day.) So he abstained. Held back. Shared pictures instead of asking questions. Pitched jokes instead of asking Wade out.

Weak hearts, indeed.

Betty Brant, of course, had popped her blond head around his shoulder as he was in deep contemplation over potentiality versus reality. Hence the phone almost being dropped. Hence the screech. Hence the clutched chest. If only his danger sense worked for other things too.

She was grimacing at him, unimpressed but watchful as he quickly got his shit together. She let him badger her a bit about not sneaking up on people before saying, bluntly, “You texted him, didn’t you?”

Peter stilled. There was no point in lying to her. His password meant as little to her and her Quirk as the Central Hero Agency’s very expensive firewalls, security systems, and 24/7 IT department. She did try to respect their privacies. But most of the time, she seemed like she still didn’t have a lot of control over her powers, disappearing for hours only to return, wild-eyed and poofy-haired, to the reality outside of pure data.

Still, Peter resented it a little. “I thought you gave me that stuff so I could make an informed decision. Consider me informed.”

Betty frowned, her hands on her hips. “You didn’t make the right decision, though,” she replied.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Peter replied heatedly. “It must be disappointing when others don’t produce the output you expect. But that’s what happens when you deal with  _ people  _ instead of  _ code _ .”

A long moment passed. The words went played back between Peter’s ears, and he realized, belatedly, what he’d said out of defensive anger. To imply Betty was trying to poke and manipulate him the same way she would data with her Quirk was harsh and patently untrue in even the most technical sense. But Betty looked more bewildered than hurt, leaving Peter alone in the sudden realization how goddamn cruel he’d just been. Uncle Ben always said anger was a double ended, double sided sword that stabbed the user more than it penetrated the target.

“…Sorry,” Peter muttered to the floor. He repeated it again, then a third time before saying, “It’s just… what he did was so overwhelmingly bad. All those people. Bad people, sure, but still people. People with families. It’s hard to come back from that. But he’s- he’s trying so hard to anyway.” He lifted his head. Then, stronger, he said, “What’s the point of supporting rehabilitation if you don’t support people who are actively going through it?”

If anything, Wade was inspirational. He’d made horrible choices and done horrible things. He’d dug himself into a pit so deep, there was no light left to shine into it. Then he crawled out and tried to keep others from making his mistakes. Wasn’t that worth something? Wasn’t Wade himself worth something? Some understanding, at least? Or a real second chance?

But Betty disagreed. “That’s the thing, though. I’m not sure how ‘rehabilitated’ he really is.”

“He saved us, Betty,” Peter reminded her, an edge to his voice. “MJ was about to get us in a bar fight that would have maimed and/or killed us-”

“ _ I know _ . And she feels incredibly guilty about that.” Betty sighed, lifting her hand when Peter opened his mouth to argue with her again. “You’re misunderstanding me, Peter. What I meant about rehabilitation… it isn’t about him. It’s about, you know…” She looked left and right. Then she stepped closer to Peter, whispering, “ _ The Central Hero Agency. _ ”

“What do you mean by that?” Peter whispered back.

They were toe to toe with each other now. Betty’s clear gaze was direct and relentless. “I’m not sure they want him rehabilitated at all,” she confided quietly. She shook her head. “The way they’ve been hiding it in the system, the things they’ve been keeping—and not keeping—under wraps… he’s  _ convenient _ for them, is what I think.” Her gaze dropped to Peter’s sternum. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to explain it.” She made an absent, grasping motion near her head. “I didn’t grab any docs referencing it, so it’s just… shades of memories. Bits and pieces of leftover data.” Betty snapped her fingers suddenly. “Oh, but I do know his last assignment! It’s currently active too. Maybe that will help. You can look into it and judge for yourself.”

Peter wasn’t sure he should. “What was it?”

“They wanted him to keep tabs on someone named Eddie Brock,” Betty said earnestly, her voice dropping out of the whisper.

“Who’s Eddie Brock?” The name inspired zero feelings of familiarity. Peter rolled it around in his head a couple of times.  _ Eddie Brock, Eddie Brock, Eddie Brock- _

“Beats me.” In flagrant violation of Quirk regulations, Betty’s eyes started gleaming a telltale white-blue. “I could look on the internet, I guess, but-”

Peter caught her arm before she could dematerialize. “Let me handle it the old-fashioned way?”

Betty paused, looking at him. Eventually, her eyes stopped glowing, her irises and pupils reasserting themselves. She seemed to assess him a minute before fully relaxing.

He was important to her because Ned was important to her, Peter remembered suddenly. And he was the reason why Ned joined Hero school. That must have been the reason for the trusting, easy smile she gave him then.

It was a trust he had not earned.

“Okay,” Betty said.

He was almost half a foot taller than her, and he felt every inch of it. He kept his expression calm—worthy of that trust, he hoped—even as his gut churned with the knowledge of his duplicity. After all, the only real reason why he asked her not to look it up was so that he could bury and ignore this information himself. The guilt was piercing. First, for the implied acceptance of this new information. Second, for taking the first set of information in the first place.

He should have never had access to that dossier. It wasn’t fair. Wade would never have the chance to explain his past for himself—if he even wanted to. Peter already knew.

He couldn’t change what he did, but he could draw a line. Right here. Right now. If he was going to be a good friend, he wouldn’t dive any deeper into Wade’s past—or present. He just wouldn’t.

But who the hell was Eddie Brock?

-

Peter saw Wade for the first time since the Marco incident on a Wednesday. It was almost five weeks to the day of their awkward introduction, and neither Peter—nor Wade—were prepared for it. But very few people were prepared for that day, as it turned out.

If someone had told Peter that Greenwich Village was going to be hit by dimension-hopping dinosaurs equipped with lasers rifles, well… Peter would have stayed in bed. It wasn’t unthinkable in their world, not after all the nonsense they hosted regularly with aliens and Asgardians, not to mention those Quirks that defied all laws of physics—and he did mean all.

He just really wished he had stayed in bed. 

Instead, he’d treated MJ to her favorite ice cream from a shop on Grove Street. MJ, who had been gloomy for days, perked up at this rare gift. It even pried her bear trap of a mouth open, which led her to sharing the fact that their little newspaper might be more heavily supervised in the future—if not shut down entirely—over the recent revelations about certain professors and their wielding of certain answer keys. She shared this lightly and almost delicately, the same way she shared information she knew people weren’t going to like.

Peter was prodding, trying to gauge the seriousness of this, when the dinosaurs hit the street without warning. The ground rumbled and the windows rattled. Their screeching cries were more potent than any alarm, and their weapons were more brutal than most villain attacks, blasting buildings apart in a series of flashing lights almost too quick to follow.

But the Pro Hero response was swift and brutal. The usual slow response time had been obliterated by the extraordinary situation. While it might take the almighty Central Hero Agency thirty minutes to approve the right permits to the right Heroes to respond to the right villain acts, any hint of a second alien invasion got an instant approval and call to arms. All hands on deck, as it were. Their street was almost immediately cleared of the villainous dimension hoppers as a result.

Peter, seeing no way to slip away, hunkered down with the rest of the civilians to wait. Like them, he watched Pro Hero after Pro Hero make their way down the street in a coordinated fashion. It made him bitter, seeing how quick the response rate could really be. They had the infrastructure, communications, and manpower in place to help any distressed person in the city at any time.

But they didn’t.

And they wondered why New York City had still had vigilantes? Tsh.

It took them about thirty minutes to wrap up the invasion in a tidy little bow. Once the dinosaurs were neutralized, the Pro Heroes on the scene started the long dirty work of clean up. Captain Marvel and the Hulk were seen moving massive piles of concrete out of the way so EMTs could come in. The Invisible Woman, the Thing, and Daredevil poured over collapsed buildings for survivors. Peter even saw a couple of seniors from ESU—marked by their yellow safety vests—meekly marching down a street after an imperiously floating Victor Von Doom. No one from Support Track, naturally.

“Is that a villain or a hero?” hissed a civilian.

“Depends on the day,” Peter muttered. MJ elbowed him.

Soon after, Peter and MJ were safely evacuated from the storefront they’d been huddling in with the rest of the civilians they had been with. Under the sharp orders of a Pro Hero Peter didn’t recognize, they were pulled along in a crowd, away from the damaged buildings and towards stations down the road. Hero Supports manned the tables, armed with cameras and tablets to record their information and witness statements. The resulting report would probably take two years to reach the public’s hands, but it would be damn thorough, as it was for most major villain attacks.

Peter knew the drill—mainly because it was a drill. An annual one at school from kindergarten to senior year in high school. He knew the drill better than he knew the pledge of allegiance, mostly because Aunt May never made him practice the latter when he got home from school.

And a major part of the drill was never to deviate from the drill—not unless he was given an explicit order from a Pro Hero.

And Peter, still annoyed at the quick response of his natural enemy, was hit by a sudden and intense urge to  _ deviate _ .

Obeying the impulse, he pushed and wiggled and tugged his way out of the crowd and away from MJ. He kept at it until he was half-jogging on a side street that was blocked off by caution tape. He skittered the tips of his fingers over it briefly—because there was breaking away from the crowd and there was breaking the law. Two separate camps, there. He fisted his hand, then ducked under the tape, taking off in a quiet sprint.

-

Peter didn’t ignore the tape to get away from his responsibilities. No, he ignored the tape to run to them. The work of Spider-Man trumped the work of Peter Parker always—and Spider-Man needed to make sure all of the civilians on the street had actually been evacuated.

He didn’t have his suit, so, instead, he pulled up his hood and then pulled his collar up and over his face. He took over the five blocks closest to Grove Street, avoiding the sparse presence of heroes here by turning corners or climbing up buildings to avoid them.

The Pro Heroes had been pretty thorough, as expected, but Peter looked where Pro Heroes didn’t think to look—behind doors and beside dumpster bins. Under trash and over window sills. Sure enough, he found people.

He stumbled across a man with a chameleon Quirk clinging to a fire escape, bloody and dazed. He pulled a woman out from under an unmanned taxi, holding her up until her knees stopped shaking. He found a seven-year-old in a large planter, making excellent use of her rock Quirk. He uncovered an elderly man huddled under a pile of pallets, concerned not for himself but rather for the three hissy, spitty feral kittens in his arms. He acted as a foot stool for a feathery woman when her wings turned out to be too small to support her descent from her tree. He helped a sheepish, Quirkless man out of an open pothole. He overheard, then located a teenage couple—a boy and a girl—in a partially wrecked car, hiding under a blanket. Their enthusiasm and frequent Jurassic Park references made Peter think they hadn’t seen hide nor laser of their dinosaur friends.

Peter had found a number of people who hadn’t been so lucky. He was… trying not to think about those.

Regardless of where he found the living survivors, he led them back to Grove Street. Some he pointed, some he guided. Others, he held their hand right up to the yellow tape, consequences be damned. Then he went back and kept searching. Fortunately, no one stopped him.

It took him all of twenty minutes to do a sweep of the entire area. The lines leading up to the station were still long and slow to move. He could sidle back up to MJ with no one the wiser.

Instead, he did another sweep, looking for more stragglers and dodging the occasional Pro Hero in the process. He stayed vigilant, watching the windows from the corners of his eyes. The streets might have been empty, but a considerable number of people had been ordered to shelter in place—and quite a few were ignoring the directive to stay far away from the windows. Well attuned to the wandering eyes of New York City’s ever-present lookie-loos, his spider sense warned him every time a phone was lifted in his direction, giving him time to turn his back to it, start running, or to turn the corner. He hadn’t been outed in years of vigilantism, and he wasn’t about to start now.

When he made his third full pass of the area and found no one new, he stopped under the awning of a bakery. He braced his hands on his thighs, breathing in deep and trying to will away the throbbing in his head.

He’d be better at this vigilante thing if he wasn’t so angry all the time. The title was “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”, not “Wrathful Spider-Thing From Hell”, right? He should be more grateful that the Pro Heroes had made such quick work of things here. That there were so few casualties. That there were so few stranded bystanders with no idea where to go.

Instead, he was remembering the Vulture, who had killed ten people before he warranted an official response. Or Kraven, who made a sport of hunting those with only the most unique Quirks. He was completely ignored by Pro Heroes—that is, until he’d killed the friend of the mayor’s son. And what about Scorpion? Electro? Hammerhead? Tombstone? All these villains, Peter had to deal with by himself.

Meanwhile, the Central Hero Agency sat back in their board room and weighed whether it was worth using up the resources it would take to knock these men down. It sucked. The NYPD was useless in these scenarios too, as they didn’t touch crimes involving Quirks. And even if they did, most of their jail cells couldn’t contain the weakest of Peter’s enemies—hence why Pro Hero Agencies were needed in the first place.

He took another couple of steadying breaths before pushing himself back up. He scanned the rooftops automatically, noticing the burn marks as well as the chunks taken out of the building. Then he swept his gaze down, eyes landing on the red bricked rubble—big enough and heavy enough to crush any unwitting civilians. Or Pro Heroes.

His focus narrowed sharply at a shape within the rubble—and then, abruptly, all the anger drained out of him like a slowly leaking balloon.

His ears started buzzing. His face went cold. He stumbled forward once, disbelief and fear choking him.

There was a single red and black arm sticking out of the rubble. It had a Central Hero Agency seal branded on the back of its glove.

Potentiality shattered into nothingness around his ears while regrets piled up like a burial mound. He felt like he’d been slugged in the stomach with an all too familiar surge of grief.

And then…

And then he remembered that  _ stupid fucking dossier. _

Choking on his breath over the sheer relief, he lunged forward until his knees were in the rubble itself. Wade had a healing Quirk, a Quirk so extreme he literally couldn’t die. Scrambling, he grabbed that half-closed hand and whispered Wade’s name urgently, promising him he’d pull him out—that he’d explain why he could later. He’d tell Wade about his Quirk, he decided. He’d tell him about Spider-Man too. Why not? That seemed so trivial compared to what he’d just thought, the few seconds he considered a reality without Wade.

But the arm came out of the rubble too easily, rigor mortis stiff. It hadn’t been crushed off either. It had been bitten, then spat back out. Saliva and blood mixed together in a thick, sticky goop that didn’t seem to be drying anytime soon. Yelping, Peter almost dropped it, catching it before it could hit the ground and then holding it at arm’s length.

He had… absolutely no idea what to do. Wade would heal, yes, but did he need this? The only context he had for this kind of thing was normal first aid. All he could think of was how much he needed to get this arm in ice or something. Or did Wade shed arms like lizards shed their tails?

It was too much to think about. He couldn’t even call him. His phone was functionally bricked until the emergency alert system went off. All he could do with it at the moment was tell the time and call the cops. Stressing over it, Peter took off his jacket and carefully wrapped up the abused limb. Looking around, he noted he remained unwatched at the moment, so he pulled his collar down away from his face.

He could go back to Grove Street with this and hand it off to a Pro Hero, but he did run the risk of being outed by the people he saved. It would be bad, but not that bad. Not Spider-Man levels of bad. He’d probably get a slap on the wrist. Or a misdemeanor. He could be expelled too.

But it would be worth it, if Wade’s arm got back to him in time.

Accepting the consequences, Peter started to head back to where he’d come from. But then he had to jump back when half of the building’s side suddenly slid off, covering the road just inches from his toes in chunks of rubble. Squinting up at the building suspiciously, Peter backed off, heading in the opposite direction. Okay, Grove Street was out as an option. For now.

Then all Peter had to do was find one of the Pro Heroes he’d dodged before. He trotted in a half-jog, watching damaged buildings and street corners with equal wariness. But no Pro Hero accosted him. This was going to be harder than he thought—and the deeper he got into the taped off zone, the more trouble he was going to be in.

It would be worth it, he repeated to himself. But his confidence wavered before firming with resolve.

Still looking for another Pro Hero, he crossed another two streets. He heard voices and radios echo in and out of the ruined buildings, rising and falling in ways he couldn’t quite track. Every time he tried to trace the sound to a Hero, he found a deadend.

Peter rounded a corner. He was jogging on the streets—like a normal, non-Spider-Man, non-vigilante person—but this seemed to keep other Pro Heroes just out of reach.

Exasperated, Peter had just decided to make a leap for the lowest roof when he suddenly collided into a warm body.

That warm body had hands like iron, and Peter was stopped immediately, irrevocably. Caught red handed while hugging a bloody limb. Even beyond the consequences he had accepted, this didn’t look good. Peter cringed, half-closing his eyes.

“Baby Hero,” his captor chided. “You’re so not supposed to be here.”

Peter opened his eyes at the familiar voice. “Dom!” he said quietly, relieved.

Her expression wasn’t nearly as friendly. She was frowning at him, raising her eyebrows in a way that immediately made him think of his professors when he did something especially idiotic. She opened her mouth and Peter cringed preemptively. He hated getting reprimanded by people he liked.

“The fucker spat it here, I know it.” Fifteen feet away, Deadpool was leaning over a pile of concrete and rebar, ripping it apart with his, well. Hand. He tossed a head sized bit of concrete over his shoulder. “So goddamn rude. I taste  _ delicious _ , thank you.”

Dom’s mouth clicked shut. Her eyes had dropped to Peter’s bundle. She was starting to grin. She loosened her grip on Peter, laying a casual arm around his shoulders instead. “What was that about my Quirk not finding your arm, Wade?” she asked teasingly.

“You’re wrong,” Deadpool snarled. “I don’t care what your stupid Quirk says.” He turned sharply to face her, finger pointed. “It was dropped here, not by Grove-” He cut himself off with a soft, “Oh.” His tight shoulders fell and his wide white eyes were fixed to Peter’s face.

“Special delivery,” Dom drawled teasingly. “Lucky.” She poked Peter’s cheek pointedly as Peter tried hard not to look even more guilty, wondering if he could go back to the scenario where Dom was the one who was going to be reprimanding him. With the way Peter felt about things, he’d fall apart if it came from Wade instead. He lifted the arm up as a peace offering.

But Wade’s focus was on Peter, not the offering. He stepped forward, waving a hand at Dom vaguely. “Go… take the thing to the thing,” he said vaguely, clearly distracted.

Dom gave an untidy salute. “Yes, boss!” she trilled before walking away, but not before lightly shoving at Peter’s head.

Peter swallowed heavily. She was leaving him alone like this. In trouble, up a creek, and literally holding a Pro Hero’s severed arm. And in the presence of… whatever Wade was to him. Potential-friend or potential-something else. Or potential-guy who didn’t want to hurt another guy’s feelings so has just been speaking when spoken to or something like that.

Wade stopped about two feet away, just hovering. “…You look like a baby kitten facing off against a two-hundred-pound Rottweiler,” he said, something in his voice both melancholy and humorous. He seemed fixated on Peter’s face.

“And you look… good,” Peter replied.

He could have slapped himself. Wade looked the very opposite of good. He was covered in a fine coating of dust, and his suit was torn to shreds, matted with blood and saliva. Raw and reddened cheeks were visible under a half-charred mask, giving him the distinct look of a man who had been hit in the face with a laser and survived to heal about it.

And, oh yeah,  _ he was missing a whole damn arm _ .

Peter was so embarrassed, he could die. He tried to fix it. “I mean. You’re- I’m happy- This is- It’s good to see-” Wade cocked his head at Peter’s stumbling, his expression blank.

It was then that Peter realized he had been right to avoid meeting Wade in-person yet again. As horrible as Wade looked at the moment, something warm and pleasant was tugging at Peter’s stomach. The sight of him filled Peter with such an incandescent feeling, almost too much of one. It was that feeling of wanting to backflip or jump out of a window again, but this time it was a hundred times stronger.

Peter was just so very pleased to see Wade, unwillingly so.

And Peter was just standing there, like an idiot, blatantly breaking the law. The law that a Pro Hero like Wade was supposed to enforce. He hung his head.

“…Hi,” Peter said miserably, waiting for the second shoe to drop.

Wade hummed in the back of his throat before closing the rest of the distance between them. He stood, shoe to shoe with Peter, for a moment before reaching out to tweak his nose. “Hi,” he said with a grin in his voice. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Peter winced. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he agreed. Belatedly, he offered up the arm again to Wade—but for what purpose, he didn’t know.

As if he’d forgotten the found limb, Wade made a pleased noise, lifting it as if to test the mass of it. Then he abruptly hefted it over his own shoulder like it was, well, a dead weight. “It’s a good thing I tapped such a good arm detector to assist me. Thank you, citizen,” Wade said with an exaggerated wink. “Your keen eye was integral to this mission.”

Peter nodded without thinking. Then stopped. Wait. What? Wade was going to… cover for him?

But Wade wasn’t done. “Could I perhaps borrow you a little while longer to assist me in rendering first aid?”

His sense of responsibility reared its head. “To who?”

“To me, of course,” Wade crowed, pivoting and marching down the street. Confused, Peter followed him half a step behind.

He didn’t have to follow him for very far. About a block away was a black windowless van with a Deadpool logo spray painted on it. Both back doors were wide open, and the road just outside of them was littered with boxes and crates of ammo and grenades, half used. Skipping through the boxes without a care, Wade got up and into the back of the van before shimmying out and tossing Peter something small and black. “First aid kit,” he announced.

The hell it was! Wade had thrown him  _ a roll of duct tape _ . Peter approached him rapidly, spouting off wildly about things like bacteria and gloves and infections. And, for his part, Wade nodded thoughtfully at the lecture, seeming like he was listening. He maneuvered Peter, even with one hand, to trade spots with him so that Peter was the one sitting in the van, his legs hanging out the back.

And it was only when Peter was sitting that it occurred to him to shut up—because nothing he was saying was getting through to Wade. Wade and his healing Quirk cared little about the basics of first aid. But why the hell was Peter the one sitting here? Instead of Wade?

Wade gently plucked the duct tape from Peter’s hand and pulled off a lengthy strip. “I don’t need anything fancier with my Quirk,” he said, his voice subdued compared to Peter’s earlier rant. “You did me a favor, bringing me this. Most people would have left it.” He started smashing the end of the limb to his bloody stump, twisting and grinding it. “But if I can just… get it to touch and keep touching… no need to regrow actual limbs. Win-win for everyone.”

He was close like this. Close enough that Peter could read the exhaustion in him loud and clear. Something tender and small in Peter’s chest worked itself free out from under all the mess of everything else, and he found himself taking the duct tape from Wade’s hand and helping him guide the severed limb back to its home on his body.

Things squelched and oozed audibly. Wade winced. “Sorry,” he apologized.

Peter ignored the noise and the gore the best he could, deciding to treat it like a broken arm that needed to be immobilized. He taped it up and around. He taped it left and right. He did it so many times, he was almost in a trance over it, and he did it enough times that Wade stopped holding his own lost arm up. He instead reached up, his good hand curling over the edge of the roof of the van. 

It was then that Peter realized the severed arm was pulsating wetly. Under the leather and duct tape, the muscles were writhing like a bunch of thin eels had burrowed themselves into his skin. And the longer Peter watched, the further down the arm the eels went.

This was Wade’s Quirk in action. No flashing eyes, no bright colors, no transformations, no scents. Just pure, squishy organic matter moving to heal an injured part of himself.

“It’s gross, isn’t it?” Wade said suddenly, like he desperately needed Peter to agree. The slap of meat against meat wasn’t the greatest sound around, but…

“Whatever it is, it’s keeping you alive,” Peter said, tracing one of the writhing pieces with interest. “It’s… great.”

“Great, huh?” Wade chuckled before pressing his face in his extended arm. Then he turned back to Peter. “You’re so fucking cute, you know that?”

Peter had never heard someone say something so complimentary in such a despairing voice. He considered, for a second, all of the contradictory thoughts he’d had about flirting and friendship and what it all meant at the end of the day. Then, bluntly, he said, “Giving people my phone number is the only pickup line I have. Just tell me to back off and I will.”

This seemed to startle Wade. “Why would I want you to do that?” he said, voice a little too loud.

Peter tried to beat back the misery, but it sank into him with cold claws. “You haven’t been reaching out. I can read between the lines.” He looked down at his lap sharply, dropping the roll of duct tape from his sweaty palm.

He wanted to be good about this one this time. He wanted to be mature. He wanted to say something about how it was okay if they were just friends, but his throat was too dry, and he was worried it would be a lie. He would save it for when it wasn’t one.

But, most of all, he wanted to push down the small part of him that had crossed the line, without permission, between admiring Wade for what he was doing and liking Wade for who he was. A like that was crossing way too close to a crush for him to handle right now, especially now after such a wild roller coaster of longing and anticipation and grief and-

And Wade’s good hand was tipping his face back up. His expression was serious—what Peter could see of it, anyway. And his proximity was… a lot to absorb. But the heat low in his belly said this was anything but threatening. Wade had pulled in so close, he was standing between Peter’s legs. If Peter wanted to escape this, he’d have to crawl deeper into the van itself.

But he didn’t  _ want _ to. He didn’t deal well with being backed into things, historically. He never did like tight spaces, and, since his Quirk fully matured, his tendency was to escape such situations by climbing vertically. But it seemed like Wade was bound and determined to be the exception to every rule. Peter didn’t feel like climbing away at all, or escaping. He liked where he was just fine, his knees close to touching Wade’s hips, his eyes staring into the white lens covering Wade’s own.

Wade was barely touching him—just one hand under his chin—and Peter’s heart was already thundering.

“You think I don’t want you?” Wade said musingly, “Who in the whole entire world has ever said that to  _ you _ ?”

It was a nice sentiment, and Wade’s incredulity was genuine. Later, Peter knew, he’d replay that over and over. But in the moment, his heart thundered away still. Heat rolled under his skin. His throat was dry. He was so, so afraid of saying something stupid.

All he knew was that his anguish at his discovery in the rubble had been real. And that this really, really didn’t feel platonic at all. Wade had flirted. Peter had given him his number. They had chatted regularly and enthusiastically. And now, Wade was standing far too close to be a neutral party. Galvanized by this simple pattern, Peter started to say something.

But then Wade’s severed arm suddenly spasmed. It seemed incredibly painful. Hissing through his teeth, Wade curled into himself, muttering something disparaging about nerves reconnecting.

“Whoa,” Peter said. He said it again when Wade’s fingers started to flex, as if shaking off a pins and needles sensation. It was one thing to know Wade had an extreme healing Quirk. It was quite another to see it in action. His severed arm was severed no longer. “…Cool.”

Wade laughed, an abrupt startled sound. He repeated the word to himself, as if in disbelief. Then he paused, tucking his lip between his teeth. “I don’t know about cool, but… you are very good for my ego. Did you know that?” He swayed back to Peter, grinning again. “Wanna kiss it better?”

It was the kind of tongue in cheek suggestion that could be taken either way. An invitation that could be retracted quickly. A joke with a missing punchline.

But Peter was done over analyzing—and so he reached out, taking the request at face value.

He was perhaps a little too eager. He got a grip on Wade’s sword straps and pulled him down to his level. Well, yanked him down to his level, to be more precise. The sudden redistribution of weight knocked Peter on his back, and Wade followed him with an oof. Wade immediately started laughing, his whole body shaking with it.

And he only stopped when Peter’s lips met his.

There was, perhaps, too much teeth in this, as there was too much strength earlier. But Peter reaped no consequences from this, as Wade merely leaned into the touch. He took it over, his dry mouth brushing warmly against Peter’s lips. Immediately dizzy, Peter tried mimicking his actions only to find that there was no real rhyme or reason to the way Wade kissed. One moment, Wade was kissing him deeply. The next, he was pulling back, delivering precise, stinging pecks to Peter’s jaw and chin. The next, he was cradling Peter’s face with one large palm, devouring him, the kiss deep and dirty. Then light again. Then gentle. Then forceful.

All of it focused. All of it fixated. All of it overwhelming. Peter was having a hard time catching his breath.

As if the kissing wasn’t distracting enough, Wade kept his body carefully over Peter, never leaning too much of his mass on him. He kept most of it up through a folded arm over the top of Peter’s head, and Peter had never felt so surrounded by another person. His hands roamed, flying over Wade’s strong chest, lingering on the flex of Wade’s wide shoulders, and dipping appreciatively into the curve of his spine.

Peter wasn’t lovely. Wade, on the other hand…

Both of their phones beeped. They parted slowly. Still hovering over him, Wade pulled his phone out, looking at the notification. He angled it to Peter after a second, showing him that it was a mass reminder. All civilians that weren’t sheltering in place had to show up to their closest reporting station. It was the third one of its kind in the last hour, and Peter resented its interruption. He let out a thoughtless, wordless snarl, and Wade laughed, amused.

He rolled off of Peter then, sliding into the space of the van floor that Peter wasn’t occupying. There wasn’t much of it. With his bulk, Wade had to lie on his side, which he did, head propped up by his hand as he looked down at Peter. While Peter tried to calm down his heartbeat, Wade idly traced a finger down the center of Peter’s chest, following the line of buttons on his flannel shirt.

“ _ I kissed a boy and I liked it, _ ” he sang under his breath. “ _ The taste of his cherry chapstick _ -”

“I’m not wearing any, though,” Peter said. His lips were throbbing.

“Well, maybe you should,” Wade said primly.

Between the two of them, Wade wasn’t winning the Least Chapped award. His mouth was as scarred as the rest of him. “Maybe you should yourself.” Peter rolled on his side, facing him.

Wade didn’t take offense. “Or better yet, why don’t we both? And by that I mean you get sloppy with it, and I’ll be there to smooch it better.” He made an exaggerated kissy face, leaning in.

Peter pushed his face away. “I bet you were a nightmare in group projects,” he said with some humor.

“Still am!” Wade said with a wink and a finger gun from a formerly detached hand. Then his face froze slightly when Peter grabbed it.

Peter was distracted again by the limb’s renewed mobility. It was nothing short of miraculous. There was an odd, fluttering pressure in those fingers, like nerves continuing to work themselves out. What a useful Quirk.

Seeing Wade watch him intently, he pressed a small kiss against the branded leather of the glove.

Wade made a choked noise at that before abruptly scooping Peter up in his arms. The resulting hug was tight and almost painful. “Oh fuck me. You’re  _ lovely _ . If I had a dog Quirk, my tail would be wagging so hard right now, holy shit.”

Peter was embarrassingly pleased. “Keep it in your pants,” he said gruffly.

“I’ll keep you in my pants,” Wade muttered nonsensically, blowing a raspberry right by his ear.

Sputtering, Peter sat up, prying Wade’s arms off of him. He scooted closer to the edge of the back of the van. “Anyway, I have to get back. I have to report in.”

“Fuck those guys, ugh.” Wade threw a dramatic arm over his face, sniffling loudly. “Fine, go. I miss you already.”

Peter’s soles hit the street asphalt. He paused, still seated, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, looking over his shoulders.

After a beat, Wade dropped the theatrics. “For what, gorgeous?”

Wade was lying on his back now, both arms crossed behind his head. The damage to his suit showed off the deep scarring everywhere on his body, but it also showed off how unbelievably built he was. With no embellishments. Peter would have had no idea how thin Wade’s suit was without it being in tatters like this. Most Pro Heroes built their suits with padding and extra armor, which always made them look bigger than they were. 

Peter wouldn’t have cared if Wade was smaller than he was, but, since he wasn’t…

Peter wanted to test the thinness everywhere. He wanted to sit in Wade’s lap and feel along his arms some more. Peter wanted to find where Wade was the warmest. And he wanted to do it all while Wade kissed him more and more. He wanted to do it in the van or on the couch or maybe even on a bed. He wanted to stretch out beside Wade with no suit at all and feel his voice vibrate through his chest—higher with amusement, lower with annoyance, even lower than that with… whatever this was.

Peter was distracted. Excessively so.

“For assuming things,” Peter said at length. For having a weak heart, he meant. “I was really worried you were humoring me. So… just… text me more often?”

“You are  _ so  _ going to regret that. I was trying not to scare you off.” Grinning, Wade kissed his hand and threw it at him. “Mwah! I’m mentally composing hundreds of texts as we speak!”

Peter huffed out a laugh, standing. He waved awkwardly at Wade, flushing red when the man mimicked his actions with a knowing smirk. Clearing his throat, Peter pulled out his phone, checking his own alert. A map of stations showed that Grove Street was still the closest area. There was no way MJ wasn’t going to notice his absence but maybe he could pretend he got caught up in the crowd.

Plotting out the closest route, Peter rounded the vehicle, his eyes on the map.

Then his spidey sense twitched. He blindly sidestepped around a massive, wide shouldered man standing outside of Wade’s van. He stumbled a bit, looking at the stranger. The other man was big. A little bigger than Wade, even. He had graying hair, a metal arm, and a shining glint in one eye. Like Wade, the guy was armed to the teeth with weapons.

The two of them made eye contact with each other. Peter suppressed a shiver of unease but held the man’s even gaze.

Then he put two and two together.

This was Nathan Summers, aka Cable. Cable showed up a lot in Betty’s dossier on Wade. The Central Hero Agency had highlighted him as either a calming influence or an instigator, depending on the situation. While Betty hadn’t grabbed the man’s own dossier when she broke into the Agency’s server, Wade’s files still had some information on this known associate.

So Peter knew that Cable was a mystery to most. No one knew where he had come from, only that he’d showed up one day to kill an abused and troubled orphan with an incredibly destructive fire Quirk. Whatever his reason for doing so, the two of them colliding accelerated matters into a very nasty, very public conflict that included not just them but also a number of Pro Heroes and one very irritable Juggernaut. Wade was one of those Pro Heroes.

And if he hadn’t been, who knew what would have happened instead? Despite still being seen as a ticking time bomb himself, Wade’s intervention had an impact on the situation. Both the orphan and Cable were speeding down the path towards villainy themselves. Nevertheless, Wade was able to get through to them and deescalate the situation before it took any lives.

The exact particulars of that conflict were heavily redacted in Wade’s dossier, but apparently both Cable and the kid had mellowed out as a result. Neither one of them were charged with crimes nor painted in the media as villains. The kid was relocated to a better home and was much happier for it. Cable stepped out of the limelight soon after, appearing occasionally to help Wade out, even though his help was technically considered an illegal act of vigilantism.

An act anyone would have a hard time proving, Peter suddenly recalled with a sinking feeling. Vigilantism required the use of a Quirk, and a charge required proof, proof that was difficult to get when a Quirk left no traces.

And Cable’s traceless Quirk was sight telepathy. And his telepathy never turned off.

Alarmed, Peter sidled past the older man and took off in a jog. His mind raced. What had he just been thinking of? Betty’s Quirk? The dossier? What else had he stupidly revealed? His feelings? His lies?

_ Spider-Man? _

Wade’s voice rose from behind him. “Nate, why are you standing there like a creeper?”

_ Fuck _ .

Giving up all pretenses, Peter ran away.


	6. Chapter 6

Burned by his exposure to Cable, Peter waited for the second shoe to drop from the safety of home. His real home, not the ESU dorm room he shared with no one.

It was a Friday, and May had been both surprised and pleased at his sudden appearance. This reminded Peter that he’d been dropping the ball on his promise to have dinner with her every week. She ushered him inside nevertheless, an arm around his back. She gave him an awkward tour of the apartment, like he hadn’t lived with her here, before acknowledging her mistake. She tried to turn it into a joke, and Peter let her think she succeeded. But in reality, the whole interaction made him think that he hadn’t so much come home as he had made himself an unwanted houseguest. It made him feel incredibly homesick.

That is, until she showed him his room.

“I thought-” Peter cut himself off. Then he tried again. “I thought you said you were turning my room into an office?”

May fiddled with his clock, untouched next to an unmade bed. She turned to him, smiling against a backdrop of curling movie posters and Lego creations. “I didn’t get around to it,” she said wryly, “It made me feel sad, so… you just got lucky.” She poked his chest. “Next time you come here, you’re going to see a workout bike where that Frankenstein computer of yours sits, buster.”

May was kidding, of course. She missed him as much as he had missed her.

He resolved to spend as much time as he could with her that weekend, so he did. This was a smart choice. The awkwardness had resolved itself within hours, and they both had a genuinely nice time catching up. It was probably one of the better weekends Peter had had in a very long time.

And it helped that Wade kept his promise. No longer holding himself back, Wade texted almost constantly, effusively. It was now Peter who was cautious and careful, which wasn’t terribly fair. He tried to respond to each and every message at face value. Had he not run into Cable, Peter would have been on Cloud Nine, fully convinced that Wade was interested in him.

But at night, when the texts stopped and May was asleep, Peter’s imagination went wild. Did Wade know? He only saw a hint of Wade’s anger once with Marco. He couldn’t imagine how he would react if he learned Peter had gone behind his back.

Peter went back to school on Monday. He had just dropped his stuff off in his dorm when a loud series of distant crashes ripped through the air. He climbed out the window in time to see a purple and red barrier expand out from the center of the school—likely out of precaution, he thought. He dropped from the window and walked to the edge of campus, one ear on the announcements now being projected through the speakers of the school. Dr. McCoy’s calm voice advised caution and encouraged classes to continue. If anyone was not in class, they were to report to the football field for a headcount.

But Peter, like a few other classmates, didn’t hurry down to the field. Instead, from behind the safety of the barrier, he watched a large, lizard-like man throw a car at a scowling, gum snapping girl. Before it could hit her, another man, massive and encased in shiny silver metal, got in the way, catching it himself.

The newcomer was none other than Colossus, one of the many members of X-Men. He was a rare sight in New York City, but an unforgettable one due to his extremely prominent Quirk and the sheer strength that came with it.

Bellowing with the effort, Colossus threw the car back at the lizard man twice as hard. This time, the projectile wasn’t stopped. The lizard man was hit and knocked further down the street. He flipped over and got on his feet, clearly dazed but trying to shake it off.

At this brief pause in violence, Colossus held himself back, apparently giving the now bored girl some feedback.

“Hey, guys! Guys!” Deadpool came out of nowhere, sprinting down the street. “Hot Topic! Boo Bear! Wait up for me!” Rolling her eyes, the girl walked off down the street, destructive energy starting to build up around her yellow and back form. Colossus, at least, waited for Wade to come to a skidding halt next to him. “How about some interagency action, huh? I’ll be gentle, treat it like it’s your first time.”

Sputtering—and clearly embarrassed—Colossus pushed Wade away, stalking off after the girl Pro Hero. Wade whined and stomped his foot dramatically. Then he spotted Peter out of the corner of his eye.

At a significant distance, Peter realized. In a crowd of other ESU students. While distracted by a villain. While Peter was wearing a hood.

Wade immediately pivoted on his foot, waving like mad in Peter’s direction. “Long time no see, beautiful!” he shouted. Peter was alarmed. His fellow students murmured, trying to figure who Deadpool was talking to. Worse, Wade started to cross the street, coming over to the campus.

Then the street itself shook as a sonic boom went off. Wade paused, looking down the street. Then at Peter. Then down the street again. “Rain check!” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the chaos. Almost guilty, he hightailed it down the road to the disturbance, but not before blowing a kiss in Peter’s direction.

These were not the actions of a man who’d heard horrible things about Peter from his extremely telepathic friend. Peter was elated.

It was almost worth getting caught and reprimanded by Dr. McCoy.

-

Peter met Wade twice more that week. While longer than their brief interaction across the street, the meetings were much too short. None of them even approached the PG-13 territory that was Wade’s van, either.

Peter found himself wanted and craving for more, but he wasn’t sure how to ask for it. Did people like Wade even date? Peter sure didn’t. His love life in the last few years was limited to brief flings and one-night stands. There were a few that could have deepened, but Peter was always the one who held people at arm’s length. When that happened, the parting was always bitter.

He was a bad partner, or so said the reviews. Secretive. Flaky. Uninterested. Forgetful. 

None of them were wrong. He had to give them that much. But it still hurt to be so callously dismissed by people he genuinely liked, especially since he himself couldn’t figure out how much of his failings in this had to do with his vigilante nightlife and how much of it had to do with the fact he just sucked at this. But that was his fault too.

No one knew he was Spider-Man, and he wanted to keep it that way. Even from potential partners. Lying—even lies of omission—didn’t make a good foundation for a relationship. He was oh for seven on that front. He should know.

But something about Wade made him want to try again anyway. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was. Maybe it was the flirting? People so rarely showed interest in Peter that he couldn’t help but perk up when they did. Or it was the heroics? Peter was frequently unimpressed by Pro Heroes, but then again, he’d rarely needed their help. But Marco had hit too close to home. Wade’s interference seemed miraculous.

Or maybe it was just Wade. His contradictory nature. His determination warring with his resignation. His capacity for both violence and kindness.

Whatever it was, Peter was caught up in wanting to understand Wade. The wanting was so strong, it was all he thought about in class these days. The conundrum of one Wade Winston Wilson.

He was so obsessed with this that Peter ended up doing exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t—sneaking behind Wade’s back. Again. And he used his information about Eddie Brock to do it.

Peter didn’t feel guilty about it at first. He just used Google. What was so weird about that? Everyone used Google. It wasn’t sneaking if the information was publicly accessible on the internet, right? And there was a lot on the internet about Eddie Brock.

Brock was a prolific reporter who specialized in investigative pieces. His career path was extensive. He worked on the west coast, the east coast, and every major city in between. His work appeared in print media, podcasts, blogs, and live news segments. He had a reputation in the business for being dogged and unrelenting in pursuit of the truth, even to the point of being unethical. Several court cases earlier in his career seemed to have curbed most of that, so much so that his long time audience accused him of mellowing out.

He’d been pretty active about eighteen months ago, when he shone a spotlight on the Life Foundation’s informed consent practices. Then he up and vanished. So hated was he in certain circles that many of Brock’s detractors gleefully posited that he must have finally bit off more than he could chew.

That was where Peter ran into his first dead end, and where he really should have stopped.

Then, while idly scrolling through Brock’s LinkedIn account, he realized that he and Brock had a shared connection—Robbie Robertson from the Daily Bugle. A man who Peter still had on speed dial.

He called Robbie up, and it was a pleasant conversation. Robbie had always been the voice of reason at the Bugle. He was also the one who consistently made sure Peter got paid, as Jameson was content to work Peter under the table to avoid a paper trail—and would constantly use that lack of paper trail to deny Peter his paycheck.

They caught up. Peter shared how he was doing and asked after Robbie’s kids. They were doing well. Robbie was especially interested in how Peter was adjusting to ESU. Like Jameson, Robbie had thought Peter wasn’t suited for a Pro Hero career, but, nevertheless, he sat down and wrote Peter a really kind and thoughtful letter of recommendation. But Robbie was like that, though—prone to voice his disagreements while never truly retracting his support. He really was the exact opposite of Jameson.

Peter thought quickly and made up a lie about an essay on Quirk usage in non-Pro Hero careers. Robbie hummed his interest and actually gave him a good place to start, as well as half of a thesis statement—to Peter’s remorse. But when Peter asked about asking other reporters—such as a certain Eddie Brock, who had written multiple think pieces on the subject—Robbie retreated a little.

“You might be better off just citing his work, Pete. Brock’s a little rough around the edges these days.”

“I didn’t know you were still in touch,” Peter said, picking his words carefully. 

“We weren’t until recently.” Robbie then sighed. “And you would know why if you did a little research on him, which I’m assuming you did.” There was a hard note in his tone that hadn’t been there before.

Peter had to tread carefully. “I admire his work, sir.”

Robbie’s voice was full of humor again. “Of course you would. If you were older and active when he was here, you two would have been quite the duo. A  _ disastrous _ duo, mind you.” He laughed. “You have no idea how many times I’ve had to explain to Jameson that no, most photographers will not slip into an active bank robbery just to take a picture of one of them tripping over their loot.”

Jameson would have another heart attack if he knew that photo came courtesy of one Spider-Man. Besides, the robber hadn’t so much tripped as he was pushed. It was one of the few Bugle articles on Spider-Man’s antics that spent more time detailing actual botched crime than vilifying Jameson’s favorite punching bag. A rarity. A true needle in a haystack.

“Most people have a little more self-preservation,” Robbie continued.

“Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.”

“Right,” Robbie said, serious again. “Speaking of Brock… if you really want to talk to him a bit, I need you to do a favor for me.”

What he asked for wasn’t much. Brock had gotten in touch with Robbie recently because he needed to secure some funds. Robbie had offered him some money on the side if he looked into something for him. He didn’t share what it was, but he promised Peter twenty bucks and a free lunch if Peter would act as a courier for him, passing off a sealed manila envelope to the not-so-missing ex-reporter.

Robbie had an ulterior motive, and Peter only realized this when Robbie gave him the address of a café. Wistfully chatting about the good old days, it was clear Robbie wanted Brock back in the newspaper business, but Brock wasn’t playing ball. He seemed to think pushing a “fan” at Brock might make a dent in his refusal, but Robbie advised Peter to tread carefully nevertheless. Brock was allegedly being “real cagey” as of late, not even giving Robbie an address to work with, and only giving him a list of pre-approved storefronts or coffee shops they could meet at instead.

Once Peter saw him, Peter thought that maybe that was because Brock didn’t quite have an address just yet.

Peter found him in the back of the café. He was able to recognize him instantly. Professional headshots of the reporter gave off the impression of an intense but well groomed man in his mid-to-late forties with brown hair and almost hazel eyes. He had the kind of face and build that could attract attention or repel it entirely. A striking individual who could easily fade into a crowd.

But now, that man looked like hell. His hair was wild, too long, and greasy. His changeable eyes were haggard. His clothes were stained, and he smelled like the inside of a garbage can at a taco restaurant. He was even mumbling to himself as Peter approached, only to go quiet as he came up to the table.

“You Parker?” he said gruffly. “Hand it over.”

Peter did so quickly, struggling to figure out what to say. Meanwhile, Brock opened up Robbie’s envelope. The man had a concentrated frown, like he was trying to glare a migraine into submission. It stayed there, fixed on his face, even as he read through Robbie’s message.

Peter opened his mouth, ready to probe. Then his spidey sense thrummed with sudden unease. Unlike the high notes and vibration that heralded its activation, this was more of a low humming. A whisper instead of a shout. Peter discretely scanned the café. There were few guests and the staff were collected around the register, chatting. Even the street outside seemed calm.

All he found out from the scan was that his spidey sense really, really did not like him taking his eye off Brock. What was once a whisper was now an urgent hiss.

Peter locked eyes on Brock again. Though the man never looked up, never showed a hint of aggression or anger, the feeling intensified like someone else had looked up. Someone else was showing aggression. Someone else was baring their teeth.

Peter’s hair was standing on end.

“Is there a reason why you’re still here?” Brock asked brusquely, glancing up.

“…Big fan of your work, sir.” If that was Peter’s voice, he didn’t recognize it. It was strangled and almost several levels higher than usual, like he’d been demoted in puberty status while he wasn’t looking. His hands were shaking.

Brock just scoffed. “Beat it, kid.”

For once showing a shred of self-preservation, Peter did just that. Robbie would have been proud.

-

Despite the inconclusive meeting, Peter couldn’t let go of the Eddie Brock angle. Not completely. The man’s own mystery was curious, but only in a distant way. Peter was really more interested in figuring out Wade’s role in this.

All of Peter’s research on Brock indicated that he was somewhat of a disgraced figure. Even Robbie’s comments about the man seemed to show that he thought Brock had made a mistake. It all came down to his last exposé on the Life Foundation, which had cast serious doubts on the ethics and morality of their science teams. Read alone, Brock’s report on this was damning. Read in context with other counter reports, comments, and official statements, well… it was confusing.

Eddie Brock claimed to have evidence on the Life Foundation’s use of human research subjects. While not an unusual practice, the Life Foundation was a tech company, not a pharmaceutical one. But it appeared that they still needed some test subjects to work out the kinks in some biotechnologies they were developing.

All the correct and legal permissions were in place. The problems—and the ethics violations—came with the recruitment process. The project pulled test subjects from homeless camps in and out of San Francisco, promising beds, regular meals, and a steady paycheck for a simple experiment.

And yet, none of the prospects were told what the experiment was. Those who demanded more information were disqualified, and the desperate who had accepted it regardless were forever changed. A good chunk of them were never seen again, and the ones that did make their way back were damaged. Anxiety, depression, increased substance use, and PTSD plagued these test subjects. Furthermore, these former subjects were completely unable to write or speak about their experiences—or at all. Alarmed, it was their friends that alerted Brock to what was going on.

Brock jumped on it immediately. He dug his heels in for months, making friends in the homeless communities and tracing lead after lead as he made his case. Following a hunch, he even talked a doctor into giving a free scan to one of the victims. They were thoroughly tested and found to have significant brain damage—the kind that was too neat and calculated to be attributed to concussive force or other trauma. The returning subjects weren’t just damaged; they were muzzled.

When the report came out, it was explosive. The claims were almost unbelievable, but people all over condemned the Life Foundation for the findings, so much so that the Life Foundation had to respond.

In an unusual move, they did not deny the basic facts in Brock’s report. In fact, Carlton Drake came out and fully embraced the responsibility for them, apologizing to the public. And that was when the narrative started to shift.

In his apology, Drake explained away the ethics violations as over-eagerness and a desire to protect a future patent. He spoke persuasively about the importance of informed consent and detailed the processes they were developing to make sure that it never happened again. He expressed sadness for the state of his former subjects, but then he rattled off a long list of statistics that correlated periods of homelessness with poor mental health outcomes, including brain damage.

He shook his head at the way San Francisco had failed its most vulnerable residents and their mental and physical health needs, then propped himself up as a solution, announcing a multi-million dollar investment in clinics that would support the homeless community. He invited everyone to visit said clinics as well as their labs so they could see “for themselves” the exciting future that the Life Foundation was building.

Then, delicately, he insinuated that, while he was glad to have this discussion with everyone, he wished it had come in a form other than a hysterical and clearly click-bait article. He pointed to the falling revenue of the newspaper that had picked up the story and expressed his doubts on Brock’s neutrality. He then pulled two of Brock’s sources on the stage with them and stood by with a professionally neutral smile as they eagerly and publicly accused Brock of exaggerating the truth.

The Life Foundation’s stocks shot through the roof. The people who came out in support of the report turned on Brock and ate him alive.

After that mess, Peter didn’t blame Brock for keeping his head low. Peter completely understood what Brock must have gone through. After all, Peter once had his own brush with a high-powered man taking aim at him, and he hadn’t even had the mask to hide behind. Peter hadn’t even been an adult.

He had been in high school at the time, and just barely. In one of his freshman history classes, a module on current events revealed to Peter that his uncle had been posthumously branded a vigilante. He had been stunned. Steady, law-abiding Ben was the exact opposite of what Peter had imagined a vigilante would be. Worse, Peter had been completely unaware of this the entire time.

Ben was labeled a vigilante because of the circumstances that led to his death. There was evidence that he had used his time Quirk before he’d been shot in the chest. Two others had died as well, and, instead of leaving the grieving families to be, the Agency decided to do a full investigation of the matter.

May sent him to Ned’s house a lot back then, Peter remembered. That was how she kept it from him, even as the Agency upended their lives and dug through their house for more evidence of Ben’s criminal behavior. Even the life insurance policy had been denied, as acts of vigilantism voided the agreement. They’d had to sell the house and move into an apartment to make ends meet. Upset and grieving, Peter hadn’t picked up on May’s silence or their steadily dwindling possessions.

He hadn’t had a clue at all.

The night after that revelation was a rough one for the both of them, Peter battling frustration and guilt while May held steady in her conviction that she made the right choice. Peter had already been struggling with Ben’s death, barely thirteen at the time, and it was her job to protect him. Peter maintained it was a two-way street; they were supposed to protect each other.

But realizing he was making May relive it all, he relented and pulled back. He saved his complaints, his thoughts, and his anxieties for his two best friends, Ned and Harry Osborn. He was fifteen then and hadn’t met MJ yet. Ned and Harry made up his whole world socially—and Harry was part of that world for more than one reason. On top of being his friend, Harry and Peter had gotten much closer that previous summer. They’d shared so many secrets then—about their hopes and dreams. About their parents. About their Quirks. About their feelings for each other.

Trusting Harry implicitly, Peter told Harry much more than Ned. While Ned’s heart was always in the right place, there were only so many times Peter could hear the words “that sucks, man” before he started pulling his own hair out. But Harry listened. Harry asked follow up questions. Harry hugged him and comforted him and distracted him when needed. Peter was so grateful to have an attentive boyfriend.

But perhaps Harry had listened just a little too well.

In the same class that had so shaken Peter’s perspective, he pitched a presentation on his uncle’s murder for extra credit points. The teacher, while concerned at the morbidity, gave him the green light. To do it, he had to display primary and secondary sources, visual and written data, and multiple viewpoints. Peter did that and more, knocking on doors, interviewing tenants near the area, calling survivors, reenacting the event, and even filing a debriefing request from the Agency itself.

Finally, by the end of the semester, he presented his findings to his class, wanting in some small way to repair his uncle’s reputation.

He didn’t bother claiming that Ben hadn’t used his Quirk. He’d found footage, and Ben’s Quirk, which produced an aura halo, was never subtle. Instead, Peter challenged the Agency’s stance, which was that Ben had directly contributed to the deaths of himself and two other people by using his Quirk. To do this, he created a model of the night in question. He theorized that Ben hadn’t recklessly used his Quirk at all. Instead, given his powers, he’d been trapped in a real-life version of the trolley problem. After explaining what the trolley problem was to his classmates, Peter walked them through the night in question.

Having heavily mined the official reports for data, Peter was able to propose at least 12 other scenarios that could have occurred if Ben had done something else. For that, the killer’s confession had been crucial. Ben’s murderer had intended to kill that night, and to keep killing until he himself was killed. Ben threw him off his rhythm by getting too close to him. Had he not, far more than three people would have died that night. Ben’s murderer himself acknowledged that.

Thus, Ben’s Quirk usage hadn’t cost lives; he had saved them. This should have triggered one of the city’s Good Samaritan laws. Instead, the Agency decided to use him as an example to prop up their continuing narrative on the selfish evils of vigilantes in their Pro Hero Society.

Peter didn’t think much about the impact of his presentation outside of his classroom, but the story leaked. It blew up quickly and beyond Peter’s control. The local news station picked it up as a conversation piece about vigilantism. A college expressed interest in it—and the particulars of Ben’s Quirk—which led to Peter getting contacted by one of their professors. Charles Xavier helped him further refine his proposed alternative timelines by providing feedback to his model. Peter even got a chance to present to his class—Science and Quirkology, Making Sense of the Rule Breakers.

When the academic interest started to die down, he was asked to make a YouTube video on his model. It received modest views, but, more importantly, inspired a robust conversation in the comments section. Peter participated in the conversation nearly hourly, and the video was frequently shared on social media.

All of the engagement encouraged it to go viral. More news stations picked it up. A few newspapers too. Even one as far flung as Colorado reached out to Peter for some quotes. Soon after, politicians were grilled on their thoughts. Few took a stance either way, largely deferred to the Agency. Pro Heroes were grilled too. Most expressed their empathy, having had to make similar decisions at some point. By then, Peter was operating in an awkward space where he was almost famous, a feeling he wasn’t sure if he liked or hated.

Then the conversation landed at the feet of the Central Hero Agency, which was the last place it was going to receive a warm welcome.

The head of the Agency wasn’t yet Alexander Pierce. Instead, it was Norman Osborn, his boyfriend’s father. Peter had seen his signature and notes on the reports he’d gone through, of course, but he never held it against Harry. By Harry’s own admission, Norman was a hard man to talk to, someone who believed in only himself and his own convictions. He didn’t care much for his own son, and he would certainly be the type to vilify and harass the family of a deceased man to make his point. In fact, half of the reason why Harry hadn’t introduced Peter as his boyfriend was because he didn’t want his father’s scrutiny on Peter’s family. The Parkers were perpetually poor, and ‘elitist’ didn’t even begin to describe Norman’s attitude about that sort of thing.

Norman wasn’t a nice—or good—man. Peter never judged Harry on the actions of his father, and vice versa. So when Norman was asked during a press conference about his thoughts on Peter’s little model, Peter didn’t think about Harry at all. But maybe he should have.

Pausing to gather his thoughts, Norman talked at length about the importance of law and order as well as the danger that unsupervised and untrained civilians create by playing at being a Hero. Quirks were extremely dangerous. They had licenses and schooling for them for a reason, and people needed to be held accountable for their actions.

Overall, Norman held to the typical anti-vigilante talking points, well-trodden arguments that even Peter (even now) didn’t necessarily disagree with. But then Norman abruptly took a turn, chiding the public for amplifying Peter’s model. He talked about Peter in particular, sharing his thoughts and anxieties. A private world Norman had never been given access to.

As Peter watched in horror, Norman told the world that Peter was a traumatized child lashing out. He talked about Peter’s parents. About his grief and isolation. About his anger. About the struggles of trying to grow up in a family with few resources.

He talked about all sorts of things that a fully grown man wouldn’t know unless his eager-to-please son had told him. But Norman also talked about Peter’s frustrations about his own Quirk and his need for recognition, framing it as a desperate desire fueling attention-seeking behavior.

According to him, Peter hadn’t sought out the model to exonerate his uncle. And he “proved” this by pointing out that Peter had never denied the base charge of Ben’s crime, which was that Ben had used his Quirk without a license. Peter had never intended to clear his uncle’s name. Instead, Peter was milking his trauma for extra credit and unearned sympathy.

“And all of his classmates know it,” Norman finished grimly, cool and collected. “I would know. My own son attends his school, and that boy is to be  _ pitied _ . Not elevated and certainly not thrown into a nation-wide discussion that he is clearly not ready to participate in.”

Peter had been gutted by the whole experience. The following month was probably the third or fourth worst one of his life, even now, and even with the enemies he’d cultivated as Spider-Man.

So, yeah. He felt for Brock. Peter hadn’t lost his career for the experience, but he too had been shamed in front of the world. He too had been stomped on by a much more important person and left, broken, with no recourse to challenge the blow and no opportunity to hit back.

And he too had been stabbed in the back. Norman’s words—cutting, humiliating, and meant to diminish him—were nothing compared to the realization of all that Harry had revealed about him. How horrible Brock must have felt when he saw the very people he was trying to help on that stage with Carlton Drake, condemning him. As far as Peter was concerned, Brock could be as rough around the edges as he wanted.

But none of this—not any of it—explained why Wade had been ordered by the Agency to keep an eye on Eddie Brock.

Brock had never been involved with Pro Heroes at any point of his career. He didn’t have a license, and he attended a normal college for a degree in journalism. Furthermore, Brock had made it his mission to expose criminal activities everywhere, and he stayed way the hell away from villains when he wasn’t exposing their operations. No one was even sure the guy had a Quirk. There wasn’t an obvious reason for him to be on the radar of the Central Hero Agency. So why the need for Wade?

It didn’t make any sense.

-

For the next week, and in-between classes and whatever he and Wade were doing, Peter kept an eye on Eddie Brock. He followed him as Spider-Man.

Figuring out what storefronts and café’s Brock preferred was child’s play. They were small, infrequently populated, had large front windows to spy on the street, and were typically located in or on street intersections. Peter found it easier to follow him in the morning, though, as every morning, without fail, Eddie Brock could be found jogging in Central Park.

It was quite an endeavor, and Brock never seemed to be enjoying it. Nevertheless, he ran on, scowling, head down like he was prepared to run straight through a wall. He took the same route at the same speed at the same time every day, and, at first, it seemed strange. His caginess with the storefronts and the coffee shops screamed that this was a man who didn’t want to be found. His antics in Central Park, on the other hand, seemed like a challenge. A demand for confrontation.

Peter never took him up on that challenge, watching from a distance as he leapt from tree to tree. No one else seemed to take him up on that challenge either, but, one day, Peter almost got his head bit off by some freak with an exoskeleton Quirk. Unlike Colossus, whose Quirk gave him the look and strength of pure metal, this man’s exoskeleton was inky black and gelatinous. Almost organic, really.

As organic as the two-inch-long teeth that threatened to tear Peter a new breathing hole. The man was ridiculously strong, and he beat Peter’s ass effortlessly. Peter hesitated to assume he was a new villain, though. Even when Peter collapsed to the ground, having been thrown through one too many tree trunks, the stranger didn’t go through with the promises of that monstrous mouth. Instead, he left Peter with the sensation of being a very small mouse being batted around by a very large cat—and that he, as a humble mouse, should be grateful that it wasn’t any hungrier.

He did try to break Peter’s arm by stepping on it, though. Peter escaped by running to the edge of the park and flinging himself into traffic. Clinging to a truck, Peter wondered what he was more upset about—almost dying or having Mark-1 of his sleek new Spidey suit so thoroughly trashed by someone with a stronger and stranger Quirk.

This experience didn’t stop him from hanging out in a bodega in his regular clothes, eyes on the street as Eddie Brock, right on schedule, jogged across the street to Central Park. Thank god he’d broken his routine the previous day and hadn’t shown up for his usual jog. Peter didn’t want to imagine the alternative.

As the worker ran up his purchases, Peter chewed on the mystery. Even after all of this, he still didn’t know what Wade was supposed to be doing with Eddie Brock. And he was afraid that, if he asked, Wade would just tell him that he just did what he was told.

-

“I guess it’s a good thing your friend is so unflappable, huh?”

Peter made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat, watching Wade flip through his photos. He handled Peter’s camera gently, broad, scarred palms cradling it like he was handling a grenade. Actually, with more care than that. Wade had made no secret of the many ways he’d tested the limits of his Quirk… and had found none.

They were sitting together in a noisy Mexican restaurant. "The best one in town!” Wade always claimed. He seemed to know a lot of bests. His enthusiasm for food is one of many things Peter liked about him.

But right now, Peter was drained. He looked out of the window, tiredly running over the events of the last two days.

He’d given Spider-Man exactly one day of vacation from his self-imposed responsibility. No patrols. No petty crimes. No Brock and his weird little jog. Just a single day—a Sunday—and Peter had used it so well. He ate like a king. He got caught up with homework assignments. He called May. He played some video games. He read half of a chapter of a book he’d been meaning to finish. He slept extremely well.

Then, come Monday morning when his sleep was interrupted by a phone call from MJ. Their school newspaper had a small office they operated out of, and that office had been broken into the previous night. The damage, she said, was bad, and he needed to bring his camera to document the evidence.

Peter had quickly rolled out of the bed, rushing to MJ’s side only to see that she was right. All of their computers had been smashed, and the tables were flipped over. Three of their four windows were gone, and their printers had been thrown out to the quad below. On the back wall, there was a giant spray-painted message.

_ Traitor. _

The only piece of equipment their team had left was Peter’s camera, and their next issue was due in five days. Instead of acknowledging this, MJ had ordered him again to take photos, then turned her face away. She stood like a statue in the mess, arms bent and hands at her hips. All around her, the full team tried to tidy the mess, and, beyond them, school officials stood in the corner, conversing quietly with Wanda Maximoff. Wanda was clearly livid. Campus security was jiggling the broken doorknob with a frown.

It was clear no one felt safe.

Unsettled, Peter just took photos, his stomach churning at the damage. MJ acted like she didn’t care about a lot of stuff—but this paper? She cared so,  _ so  _ much. She’d been working on it since freshman year. She built it up from the one-page joke no one read to a serious publication with hundreds of readers a month. Because of her work, so many more people on campus were well informed and engaged with current and local happenings—and no topic was ever off limits. That used to be something their classmates celebrated—Hero Track and Support Track alike. Now… this.

Preoccupied with this line of thought, Peter trudged around the office gloomily. He snuck one last photo of MJ before sighing deeply.

She turned to him then. “You done with photos, Pete?”

“Yeah,” he said morosely. “Are you alright?”

MJ nodded. “Yup. We’ll just go digital this month. No biggie.” Something in Peter’s face made her pause. She let out a huff of a laugh. “They think they got to me? No, Peter. Like I always say, this shit just writes itself.” She shot him an evil, toothy smile and a big thumbs up.

It was the kind of performative expression that usually made her reporters shrink. She delighted in capturing the hate of others, especially when it was aimed at herself. But while the rest of the team groaned at her response, relaxing at this small return to normalcy, Peter wasn’t so easily convinced by her showmanship.

He had known MJ since high school. He could tell that her smile was faltering a little at the edges. At this point, she had to be tired of it. Tired of this reaction. Tired of people hating the truth. Tired of people treating her like the villain when it was other people breaking the rules.

His frustration over this whole situation haunted him all day to this very moment, here with Wade. He wished he could drop it or forget about it a little while, but Wade had read him like a book, immediately asking what went wrong. And then everything… spilled out of him.

And now, Wade was going through his camera.

“You know, investigating vandalisms isn’t my area of expertise,” Wade said slowly. “But you should be worried. No one takes a bat to a computer without imagining it hitting the user instead.”

He handed the camera back to Peter. Wade was wearing civilian clothes today—jeans, a hoodie, and a medical mask. Although Wade kept on pulling on his hood to try and cover more of his face, Peter appreciated the effort. He liked seeing Wade’s eyes.

“Want me to do something about it?” Wade asked. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, weirdly still.

Peter snorted. “No. I think MJ would kill me if someone else uncovered what happened first.” She was territorial.

But Wade was frowning. He fiddled with a straw. “But you’re interested in my agency.”

Peter cocked his head, not sure where this was going. “I guess?” It was softer than he meant to. He wasn’t sure digging up information on Wade and spying on his assignment could be called ‘interest’. Interference was probably more accurate.

Wade squirmed in place. “The Deadpool Corps. We’re, uh. Probably not a good fit for you.” He sounded so apologetic.

“Probably not,” Peter agreed. “I’m still on the fence about applying for my license. Your team strikes me as one that needs, um. Decisive people.” Was that the nicest way to say Wade’s agency had a body count? Peter wasn’t sure he could ever kill another person, even if that murder would save the world. He was fine just dealing with street level crime, thanks.

But across from him, Wade was looking frustrated. It was like he was pulling and plucking at a thread of conversation only he could see… only for it to catch and stop on a dead end. His cheeks puffed out and he even mumbled to himself, tracing invisible paths on the tabletop to get back to whatever point he’d been trying to make.

Peter watched him with interest. Wade was not the most conventionally attractive person Peter had ever met, but his mannerisms were awfully cute sometimes.

“Is it- is that because you’re Support Track?” Wade tried, scratching his jaw. His eyebrows—or where they would be—were scrunched together. “Don’t let that hold you back. It’s bullshit. Dom was pegged as Support Track, and she’s a leading lady. And me, with my initial Quirk, well… it doesn’t exactly scream Hero, does it?” Peter bit his lip to keep himself from spilling what he knew. Wade didn’t notice. “I could have been an assassin or a ballerina.”

Peter thought about misdirecting Wade by asking him what he meant by initial Quirk. After all, Peter wasn’t supposed to know that Wade had undergone Quirk enhancement. What a great opportunity to cover his own ass.

At the last second, though, he refused to. “You’d look great in tights,” he said instead.

“Of fucking course I’d look great in tights. Have you seen my ass?” Wade offered a chef’s kiss to the ceiling. Then he deflated, palming the back of his neck with one hand. He huddled into himself so much, he looked half the size.

Peter reached for the arm still on the table. “What’s going on?” He settled his fingers lightly on top.

Wade let out a huge gusty sigh before his limb flipped over. He caught Peter’s hand gently, rough finger pads ghosting against Peter’s palm. “Cable’s getting under my skin. I guess… I’m probably overthinking some things.” He sounded wry.

_ Cable. _ Peter’s stomach turned. He tried to be supportive. “Lay it on me.”

“Oh, I’ve got some things I want to  _ lay _ , alright,” Wade purred. His eyes suddenly widened, and his other hand clapped on top of Peter’s outstretched arm, as if to keep him there. “Sorry, sorry! Serious talk.”

“Take your time,” Peter said, highly amused.

Wade looked pained. “You’re a couple of years younger than me.” Six, Peter remembered from the dossier. “And cute. And  _ good _ . And… unburdened by heavy shit, as far as I know. I thought… maybe…”

“Maybe…?” Peter said when Wade didn’t seem like he was going to follow up.

Wade plucked randomly at Peter’s flannel sleeve. It pulled it up just enough to expose his webshooters. Peter didn’t flinch. Generic looking fitness bands never screamed Spider-Man to anyone. Instead, he focused on Wade’s downcast expression.

Wade’s medical mask didn’t hide his heavy frown or his distant gaze. “Maybe there was something else you want from me instead,” he said finally, looking up. There was nothing particularly accusing about this statement. It was blunt. Almost melancholy, if it hadn’t been so simply said. Wade withdrew from him then, shrugging and looking off over Peter’s shoulder. “So I figured, you know… we might as well put our cards on the table. Let our intentions and motivations be known so we know how to move forward.”

Cable had talked to him after all.

Or had he? This didn’t track with Peter’s sneaking around. If Cable had shared that, Wade should have been talking about things like trust and privacy and all that—or worse, coldly telling Peter to lose his number. Instead, it seemed like he was assuming there was a real reason why Peter was around him other than mutual attraction. And he didn’t even seem mad about it! Peter was relieved he could clear this misunderstanding up pronto.

Then it struck Peter that this was the perfect opportunity to get the dossier off his chest.

_ I had a friend look you up _ , Peter thought.  _ She didn’t trust you, and I didn’t trust you enough to leave it alone. I know more about you than you probably want me to know. _

He could come clean. He could make this right. Peter opened his mouth, and he… chickened out. Tabled it. Took it, packed it in a suitcase, and tossed it back into the furthest recesses of his mind’s attic.

“I do have an ulterior motive,” he said instead.

Wade was already nodding, his expression relaxing. Though he couldn’t quite meet Peter’s eyes. “Ah, see, I figured it was something like-”

Peter interrupted him. “I want to date you.” Wade’s eyes jumped to his. “So, if this is casual for you, that’s gonna be awkward.” Then, unsure he had been clear, he said, “That’s my ulterior motive.”

Wade didn’t say anything for a minute, looking like he was having a 404 brain moment. “Date?” he stammered suddenly, still clearly fixated on the first part of Peter’s revelation.

Peter nodded earnestly. “I’m not good at it, but you make me want to try.”

Last time he tried, well… she had had a supervillain for a father. And, before that, well… Harry had made him regret it eventually. After Harry, Spider-Man almost demanded monogamy—or so Peter thought. It could just be that Peter was genuinely bad at this sort of thing. There were plenty of Pro Heroes who juggled whole entire families and their jobs. Peter couldn’t even convince one person that he was worth humoring, what with the forgetfulness and the flakiness and the caginess…

But he wanted Wade to humor him so, so much.

Wade’s eyes were crinkled above his mask, betraying his smile. He got up from his side of the table, then slid into the booth next to Peter. “You’re doing just fine,” he said warmly. He put his arm around Peter’s shoulder. Peter took in a deep breath, sinking into it. “Not the kind of ulterior motive I was expecting, but I’ll roll with it. You devious thing, you.”

Peter just leaned into him harder and watched Wade steal his tortilla chips.

Wade paid for them both and tipped well. Shrugging on his jacket, Peter went outside first and amused himself by blowing clouds of fog with this breath. They only had an hour left of sun, but the light was still sharp, reflecting and bouncing blades of light on the windows of the building all around him. Several cars honked in the distance, barely distinguishable in the pervasive rumbling of traffic. And yet the small tinkle of bells stood out and had Peter turning back to the door.

Wade emerged from the restaurant, half in and half out of his own jacket. His medical mask was around his neck, like he’d forgotten about it between now and stealing Peter’s food. So Peter had a full view of his thoughtful expression as he approached, shrugging on the rest of his jacket as he ate up the distance between the two of them.

“Do you really not want to go into Pro Hero work when you graduate?” Wade asked curiously out of nowhere.

Peter should have expected the question. He puffed out his cheeks for a moment before sticking his hands in his pockets. “Heroes and Hero Supports do a lot of good,” he said carefully. “But the bureaucracy of it; the who’s and why’s between who serves and who doesn’t. Who gets served and who doesn’t. The politics-”

“Some say all that red tape is the price of transparency. Accountability.”

“That tape is red because it's covered in blood,” Peter said grimly, his jaw tightening. “The blood of every person who couldn’t be saved because someone somewhere had to sign some form in triplicate.” Wade didn’t seem to disagree, which took the edge off Peter’s usual temper. “...Doesn’t it frustrate you?”

Wade shrugged. “It is what it is. If there was a better way of doing things, they’d be doing it by now.”

“The way things are going now only benefit the powerful few,” Peter said, disapprovingly.

“And the powerful few like it that way, and they have resources beyond our imagination to keep the world the way it is,” Wade said frankly. Bluntly. Realistically. With an air of practicality that made Peter withdraw slightly, second guessing himself.

“That doesn’t mean I have to play ball,” Peter muttered, turning away.

“Sure.  _ You _ don’t have to.” Wade shot him an unrestrained grin. “A smart guy like you, you can do anything! But…” His expression slowly darkened, turning troubled and introspective. “The alternative for someone like me, with my skill set, with my reputation…?” Wade stared at the sidewalk for a long moment before shaking himself out of it. “Well, it’s a lot darker than the alternative for someone like you!”

This was delivered brightly. Too brightly. And, unbidden, the image of Eddie Brock loomed in Peter’s head and wouldn’t go away.


	7. Chapter 7

MJ was pacing in front of her desk in the office of the school newspaper. “I need something other than a damning exposé on the incompetence of our university leadership,” MJ announced to the room. She was on the warpath. Wanda Maximoff had officially stepped down as the paper’s faculty advisor just that morning, and MJ had been breathing fire ever since.

The space was barer than usual. Fresh paint covered the graffiti, but paper tarps fluttered over the still broken windows. Their usual mismatch of furniture, now vandalized, was replaced overnight with a collection of dusty student chair desks that could have come straight out of Peter’s high school. No one complained. Peter sat with the rest of the subdued staff, fiddling with his camera. All eyes were on their editor.

“I thought ragging on the school administration was your favorite topic,” Doreen commented, bending her pencil nearly to the point of breaking. She barely fit in her seat; her squirrel tail was especially poofy today. The reporter from Hero Track smelled like ozone and dirt. Peter idly wondered if she had gotten on the wrong side of someone with an electricity Quirk. Or on the right side. It was hard to tell. Hero Track students were weirdly competitive.

“It is,” MJ acknowledged, “but if I spend all my time pointing out the corruption under our noses, eventually people will start ignoring me.” She made an impatient, rolling gesture with her hand. “New ideas, people. The fluffier, the better.”

MJ’s people were quick to look at their notes. Their editor usually wasn’t so discourteous, but Peter knew he wasn’t the only one giving her a free pass today. Wanda was quite possibly MJ’s favorite person on campus, and she had faithfully supported the paper since MJ started turning it into a serious production. Losing her was a serious blow to MJ who looked up to her so greatly.

As for Peter, well… he didn’t know Wanda as well. Wanda and her twin, Pietro, were odd members of the faculty, shrouded in mystery and misdirection. While he dealt with Pietro regularly through the mandatory physical training even Support Track had to take, Peter couldn’t point to a single class Wanda taught or a single administration function she fulfilled. She just seemed to… exist. Not so much as wallpaper but rather as something deeper and more foundational. Peter quite couldn’t put his finger on it.

In any case, MJ’s paper was the only real evidence Peter had that actually placed Wanda at the school. And even that responsibility seemed light of touch. Wanda took a hands-off approach to the paper, leaving the editor role to MJ and her assistant editor. In fact, Wanda didn’t seem to care much at all about what the paper printed, as long as it was truthful and produced with integrity.

Outside of the newspaper, the only other place Peter saw Wanda’s name was attached to the Safety Committee. The minutes were pinned to their dorm’s announcement board on a monthly basis. Peter always gave them a brief skim. Even though the presence of Spider-Man on campus would instantly end his career—and any hope he had in dodging a jail sentence—he still wanted to keep up to date. In addition to usual concerns, like natural disasters and accidents, the Safety Committee also focused on readying the school in the event of a villain attack. This responsibility was one they took very seriously. They investigated every threat and regularly ran drills for what to do in case of a villain attack, modeling scenarios after real life attacks on similar schools around the globe.

It was the worst kind of pop quiz, if you asked Peter.

Extremely high performing Hero Track students were even tapped to act in defense of the school in such dire circumstances. These students were essentially handed provisional Hero licenses. It was quite the honor and responsibility to be chosen for such a role. Naturally, Flash claimed he would be approached any day now.

But their freedom to act was severely limited. If these future Pro Heroes acted outside the agreed upon parameters, or worse, jumped the gun and acted in a less than dire circumstance, the consequences would be enormous. Jail time, the loss of Dr. McCoy’s own Pro Hero license, and the closure of ESU for good were just a few.

Peter could see why Wanda was so deeply entrenched in the safety and defense of ESU. The entire country of Sokovia had fallen under a concentrated villain attack, so she was somewhat of a subject matter expert here. Beyond that, though, he wasn’t quite sure what her role was, should something like that ever happen. Her Quirk was allegedly “intention”, and almost no one at ESU knew what that actually meant.

But if Peter took MJ’s gleeful word for it, Wanda was possibly one of the most dangerous people alive at the moment. Her “intention”, MJ claimed, could literally shape reality.

Spooky stuff.

Her twin, Pietro, was similarly concerning. He had a speed Quirk so extreme that there was a debate whether his Quirk was actually speed or rather some sort of time dilation Quirk. Regardless of its true nature, Pietro did not hesitate to use his power to make their lives a living hell during their physical fitness training.

He saved the most extreme of his antics for the Hero Track, thank goodness. Peter couldn’t imagine having Pietro’s attention on him any more than it already was. He got a taste of it in freshman year. For reasons beyond Peter’s understanding, he accidentally caught Pietro’s eye during their training. While running through an obstacle course, Pietro kept getting in his way, tauntingly zipping around Peter until another teacher, fed up, bellowed at him to stop flirting.

Pietro did stop. Laughing, he came out of his sprint in a slow jog, pushing his hair back. Then he’d turned around and winked at Peter with a knowing expression that said Pietro almost certainly picked up on his spidey sense. The whole experience was devastating. And paranoia-inducing, given his double life. But mostly devastating, because Pietro wasn’t much older than him and he was a very, very good-looking man making sly comments about Peter’s Quirk.

Since then, Peter had chalked up the experience as merely evidence that Pietro was annoying. He stuck that evidence in a box and buried it. Mostly. Avoiding eye contact with Pietro didn’t stop the comments about the true extent of his powers, but it did give Pietro the erroneous impression that Peter was painfully shy. Because of that, Pietro had backed off considerably since the first time they met. Thank goodness.

Deep in thought about the Maximoff twins, Peter didn’t register the pitches going back and forth as anything other than background noise. That changed when a chair screeched across the floor right next to Peter. One of MJ’s reporters was standing, clearing his throat self-importantly. “Excuse me, Flash Thompson here? Hero Track.”

MJ stopped her pacing, crossing her arms over her chest. “No one has forgotten who you are since last month, Eugene.”

Coloring slightly, Flash cleared his throat, reading from his notes. “According to my sources, the Student Union Building is looking into turning Pet Pals into a permanent pet café on campus.”

Peter tilted his head consideringly at that. Pet Pals brought kittens and puppies on campus during finals season as a stress reliever. It also functioned as an adoption service. It was a well-loved program, so Peter wasn’t surprised to hear more than a few happy and excited noises around the room.

For his part, Flash looked very, very smug. MJ granted him a thin, barely there smile. “Fluffy. Very literal! I like it. You can have that story. Next?”

Flash beamed and sat down. He was practically brimming with good will and ego. It was almost revolting. But MJ had hit on a piece of Flash’s psychology Peter would have never guessed at: although he was a narcissistic bully—and had been since at least high school—Flash shined best when he was given tasks to advance the mission of a group. He thrived under goals. And, of course, public recognition of the completion of those goals.

And Flash was as fixated on animals as his Quirk was. His Quirk was animal mimicry, though Peter had never seen him do anything particularly exciting about it. So far, Peter had seen cheetah spots, a nonfunctioning set of gills, a giraffe’s tail, and, memorably, a snake’s tongue. Not for the first time, Peter wondered what other part of his Quirk they must have uncovered to vault him from Support Track up to Hero Track. It must have been something fantastic. No Quirk assessor would risk their reputation on reclassifying someone if their Quirk couldn’t back them up.

Curious, Peter glanced over Flash’s shoulder at his beat-up notebook. Next to the list of scratched out pitch ideas was a smaller list. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what it was.

Beast Master. Beast Lord. Beast President. There was a theme.

Peter leaned in Flash’s direction. “What about Beast Emperor?” he suggested in an undertone.

Flash didn’t even spare him a glance. “Shut up, Parker.” But he wrote it down anyway, smiling at it.

Peter rolled his eyes and looked back out the window. Only students on the Hero Track got to debut and test out their Pro Hero names. It was an important decision, after all, and so much rode on it.

Licensing. Contracts. Even branding and merchandising.

Support Track had to wait for a name until they were picked up by an agency, as there was still a tendency to think that Support Track couldn’t hack it long enough to make the investment in a Hero name worth it. And god forbid you had to rebrand yourself.

All in all, though, it was one of the few inequities Peter didn’t mind. At least Flash had a wishlist. Peter, on the other hand, didn’t even know where to start. Spider-Man was already taken.

He hoped he’d have a few ideas soon, if only to beat off the suggestions from his agency lead. If he even got that far. Hero Supports tended to be named based on their feats rather than their powers, and Peter had heard quite a few duds over the years. Whoever named Paste Pot Pete was cruel, but at least that showed some level of creativity, given the alliteration.

Most agencies didn’t care that much. The last thing he wanted to be named was Bought the Bic Pens Boy or Organized The Sugar Packets Really Nice Man.

Now that, he figured, would truly be his villain origin story.

Musing over this now, Peter kept looking out the window.

Meanwhile, MJ was dismissing an athletics pitch at the front of the room. “Brent is on all things sports. Unless the bleachers are eating people and using Brent as human floss, I don’t want to hear anything about it.” This provoked some grumbling from the group but no outright challenges. ESU’s sports teams didn’t have much of a reputation to defend. “Doreen has the theatre beat. I’ll poke and prod about the library renovations, see what the hold up is. But we need more. Peter, what about you? Got a pitch for us?”

Hearing his name, Peter jerked his attention back into the room. There were eyes on him now. He sat up straight. “…but I’m the photographer?” he said belatedly.

MJ leaned against her desk. “That’s no excuse,” she said in a firm no-nonsense tone that made Peter’s hair stand on end. “I’ve heard at least one thing from everyone in the room except for you. What is your juiciest lead? Come on, don’t be shy.”

He shouldn’t have been looking out the window. He knew how much she hated that. Feeling guilty and put on the spot, Peter quickly tried to think of something school-related he could pitch. He kept coming up with blanks. Despite having a dorm here and a full load of classes, he spent so little time on campus. He didn’t know all the people on his floor. He didn’t even know all the people in this room! All he knew was that it was a 70/30 mix of Support Tract to Hero Track students, and that they all followed MJ’s lead with few arguments, such was her dominion over this space.

And now the full force of her power was on him, demanding he produce something of interest. But in his empty colander of a brain, there was only one interesting thing he could think of. Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess… a missing San Francisco reporter was spotted in New York City recently…?”

Nothing came of this suggestion—nothing immediately, anyway. The office was silent. The other newspaper staff gave him and each other looks.

After a beat, MJ pushed away from the desk. “Go follow your assignments,” she ordered, addressing the room. Peter felt crushed and ashamed. Looking down quickly, he started packing his stuff. “Keep me updated. Peter and I will coordinate photos when you have a draft. Drafts are due Friday.”

This provoked groans from around the room. “Even now?” Doreen asked, nose wrinkling. She waved at their gutted office space vaguely.

“Especially now,” MJ said firmly. “Nothing and no one stops the  _ Empire State Beacon _ from going to print.”

“Except a lack of printers,” Flash muttered under his breath.

The office emptied out quickly to the chorus of at least seven different conversations. It drained until only Peter and MJ were left. And before Peter could think of how to approach her, how to make this up to her, MJ was already approaching him, bringing her notes with her. She filled the seat Flash had left behind.

Peter spoke first, and in a rush. “I’m so sorry, MJ. I’ll do a better job with pitches in the future-”

But MJ wasn’t interested in that. “Have you been holding out on me? A missing person—wow!” She tapped his shoulder with her knuckles in a friendly gesture. She was even smiling.

Meanwhile, Peter’s mind tripped around in a circle. It… was a good pitch? He made a good pitch! He reigned himself in immediately before the excitement got the better of him. “It has nothing to do with ESU, though.”

“Please,” MJ said, rolling her eyes. She drew the headline in the air. “ _ Two Intrepid ESU Students Solve Missing Persons Case _ . Boom. Now it’s about ESU.”

Peter was starting to think he made a mistake. He shifted to face her more fully, shaking his head. “There’s no case to solve here. He’s not really missing.”

“And nothing you’re saying is bringing down my inner Velma, Scoob,” MJ said with a laugh. Her eyes were sparkling. For the first time in weeks, she didn’t look disgruntled or annoyed. For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t faking bravado or pleasure. She was genuinely pleased. “Who are we talking about here, hm? Who is our missing friend?”

Was this really okay? He wasn’t so sure, but she seemed to think so. “…Eddie Brock?” Peter offered tentatively, sure this wouldn’t provide any recognition.

He was wrong; MJ’s eyes practically bugged out of her head. “Eddie Brock?” she demanded. Then, not waiting for a response, she said, “ _ The  _ Eddie Brock. The guy who uncovered the Black Knife Cartel’s purchase of local PD to hide their criminal dealings? Or the guy who revealed the money laundering scheme keeping the Costa Crime Family afloat? Or are you talking about the guy who exposed that the Hellfire Club was funding Norman Osborn’s re-election campaign,  _ a scandal that lost Osborn control over the Central Hero Agency? _ ”

The longer she went on, the more flushed she became. The louder too. She went from sitting to almost standing, hovering over him. She was clearly thrilled. And vibrating.

On his end, however, Peter was embarrassed to admit he knew none of what she was rattling off so enthusiastically. And some of it—like Osborn—seemed extremely local. “Y-yeah. That’s the guy...?” he said in a strangled voice.

Noticing his expression, MJ sat down again. “He’s a rockstar in the anti-corruption world,” she said, reading him like a book. Peter struggled apologetically. She rolled her eyes before looking off. “Wow. I didn’t even know he was missing.”

“That’s because he’s not,” Peter reminded her carefully.

It was like she didn’t hear him. “I want to talk to him.”

“Absolutely not,” Peter retorted.

MJ glared at him. “Says who?”

Peter bit down on his first response. His second one too. Yup. He  _ definitely  _ made a mistake here. He hadn’t thought much about looping her into this, but now the consequence compartment was pulling up to the train station. Choo choo—instant regret.

There was a whole lot about Eddie Brock he didn’t understand. The man was smackdab in the middle of a web containing not just Peter, but also Spider-Man, Wade, the Central Hero Agency, Robbie, and that strange man in the black gelatinous suit. The last thing Peter wanted to do was let MJ climb into that web herself. MJ valued the truth over self-preservation. Who else would be so comfortable making an enemy over half of the school by airing the dirty laundry of a poorly behaving—but well loved—teacher?

But Peter had already said too much, and MJ was starting to get that strong jawed mutinous look she got when she thought he was protecting her too much. MJ wouldn’t let him step between her and their classmates. There was no way she’d let him step between her and this. She’d sidestep him, even. She’d go around him. She’d chase down the mystery like a bloodhound.  _ Alone _ .

And now that Peter had stuck his foot firmly in his mouth, there was really only one way to make sure MJ got out okay. He had to be by her side.

But not as himself. Future backup dancer and professional filer Peter Parker couldn’t do anything other than stick his fingers to things like an elementary student finger painting with glue. Peter Parker was useless.

“Fine,” Peter said decisively, standing. Focused on how he was going to make this work, he said, somewhat thoughtlessly, “But we have to bring Spider-Man with us.”

Peter couldn’t have predicted what response this would provoke. As it was, Peter flinched when MJ stood out of her chair so fast, it skidded across the floor. “Hold up. You know  _ Spider-Man _ ?” Her voice went up an octave. Her face pinked. “And I could have interviewed him  _ this entire time?”  _ She threw her notes at his head. “You are insufferable!”

Peter ducked. Ah. Oops.

-

Three hours later, Peter’s ego was still stinging. He’d been verbally reamed for over thirty minutes about hoarding knowledge and keeping secrets from friends. MJ had demanded to know everything. The whole truth and nothing but it. Peter struggled to give her a version of it that didn’t blatantly out him as the vigilante he was.

He succeeded, but just barely. Peter even had to trip back and explain his “agreement” with Spider-Man that allowed him to take pictures for the Daily Bugle. Media coverage for posed pictures, he explained with a twinge of regret. MJ had been shocked. She never knew they were posed. She had always assumed he got those pictures through a combination of luck and skill, and she stood by that skill whenever someone came sniffing around his role as lead photographer for the  _ Empire State Beacon _ .

Peter was disappointing her a lot today.

MJ’s ire had only been assuaged at the revelation that Ned too had been unaware. She was still annoyed with him, but at least she wasn’t ignoring him, which only came around when Peter truly crossed the line. She wasn’t pulling any punches though. She even commented on how much Spider-Man must have regretted trusting Peter, given the way the Daily Bugle ran with those pictures. Which… ouch.

Ego. Stinging.

Shaking his head, Spider-Man tugged on the sleeve of his newest suit, making sure the holes in his wrist lined up with his webshooters. Nothing was quite as unpleasant as webs flying (with force!) into your own damn suit just because the holes were slightly covered. In class that day, he’d jury-rigged a little metal piece to clip onto the shooters through the fabric, holding it in place and keeping this problem from ever happening again.

Spider-Man was still clipping on these extra pieces when MJ showed up around the corner, right on time. He had told her to meet him in an alley a couple of blocks away from ESU—far enough to avoid people they knew but close enough to not need the subway.

Although he told her he would be there, she tensed, hugging her book bag to her for a second before she closed the distance between them. He offered a hand. She didn’t notice it, too busy looking into the newly articulating lens of his newest suit.

“Nice upgrade,” she said in lieu of a greeting. “Michelle Jones.  _ Empire State Beacon _ .”

Peter took back his hand awkwardly and leaned against the brick wall. “Thanks,” he said, biting down on about a hundred different things. “You, uh. You know who I am. Obviously.”

MJ squinted at him. Peter sweated. Stupid. He was so stupid. And he was so bad at this secret identity schtick. He was trying to keep his voice lower and deeper than usual, but what was that hiding, really? How had she not seen through him instantaneously?

He just was lucky MJ wasn’t scrutinizing him too closely. Yet. As pushy as she’d been about meeting Spider-Man, MJ was playing it cool. Almost too cool, watching him with only the mildest of interest. Had he not been interrogated about himself, Peter would have figured that MJ was indifferent to the presence of certain spider-themed superheroes rather than incandescently furious that she hadn’t had the opportunity to meet him yet.

Peter wasn’t sure what she was playing at but resolved not to think about it too much. The sooner MJ was appeased, the better. 

He pushed away from the wall. “Well, ready to go?”

“Uh.” Alarm pushed through MJ’s stoic expression. “Where’s Peter?” She did a slow 360, as if Peter was just hiding in the alley somewhere. “I kind of need him, he’s my photographer.”

Peter pulled out his phone. “I told him not to show. Brock’s not the kind of guy who will welcome photographs.” He typed out a quick apology to MJ and sent it, putting his phone on silent. He tucked it away. He was not particularly concerned that she’d put two and two together, not with the extreme text lag that came with investing in a shitty cell service. “Ready when you are.”

“Wait,” MJ said, frowning. She pulled out her own phone. “Just… wait.” Her fingers flew at a speed that Peter knew would spell trouble for future!Peter, but there was little he could do about it.

Instead, he busied himself again with his webshooter, fiddling with a bit that was keeping him from quickly reinstalling a fresh canister of webfluid. It was a task that perhaps needed a workbench, a magnifying glass, and a file, but it wouldn’t be the first time he MacGyvered a fix without the required tools. Half of his old gear was held together by duct tape and superglue. It was really something of a miracle he hadn’t had a public indecency charge by now.

He was stalling. She was stalling. He’d dug himself into such a pit with this. He should have played dumb.

“Shit,” MJ muttered. Peter looked up. She’d gotten his text. “Damn it, Peter…” After a moment, she said softly, “Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”

Peter had to restrain himself. Surely MJ knew that he wasn’t the kind of guy who would ditch a friend to a stranger over something as petty as a disagreement. “If you’re not comfortable with me alone-”

“Nah, you’re cool,” MJ said absently. Then she stiffened and looked up from her phone, a deer in headlights. “I mean, I’m cool. With you. I mean… Your reputation precedes you. Or whatever.” Her face scrunched up in a mixture of misery and frustration. “Just lead the way, will you?”

Peter hesitated. MJ cajoled. MJ persuaded. MJ trapped people in word prisons of their own making. She did not trip over her own words. In different circumstances, Peter would be teasing her. In this one, however, he kept his mouth shut. At least Spider-Man was still in her good graces.

He led the way, guiding them to the route Brock routinely took to Central Park. They were ahead of schedule and would be able to intercept him well before they reached his destination. Mind racing, Peter was still trying to figure out a way out of this. What he wouldn’t give for the man to have slept in today, he thought wryly.

MJ drew him out of his thoughts with questions—softball questions, the kind she employed to get people to get used to talking to her. Instead of diving deep into his technically criminal history, she asked him about his favorite foods, his opinion on weasels as pets, and what his hobbies were like when he wasn’t Spider-Man. As disarming as the questions were meant to be, Peter still thought about and answered each question carefully. A shared love of greasy street food—the greasier, the better—wasn’t going to launch any red flags by itself, but Peter sure as hell wasn’t going to draw the lines between his two identities for her.

The only time she came close to talking about his vigilante life was less of a question and more of an observation: Spider-Man didn’t hesitate to walk the streets of New York City in broad daylight.

This was both true and something she couldn’t ignore. Not when a street vendor teased Peter about missing the vigilante 2-for-1 special that morning. Not when Peter fetched a rogue ball for a bunch of kids, who then proceeded to beg him to play with them. Not when Peter paused to take a photo with a bunch of grannies coming out of a bodega.

“You’re brazen, is what I’m trying to say,” MJ said through a mouthful of free churro. “I thought vigilantes try to stay out of sight so they don’t get arrested.”

“Some do, but I don’t,” Peter said, trying to see the world through her eyes. Vigilantism was done through a veil of secrecy, but here Spider-Man was, wandering around the streets in an easily trackable costume. And yet his antics had only provoked four seriously focused attempts to officially imprison him. Or maybe just three. Rumlow was probably trying to kill him that one time. In any case, the Central Hero Agency clearly didn’t take him seriously.

“New Yorkers don’t seem to hate you as much as I thought they did,” MJ continued, polishing off the rest of the churro.

That brought Peter up short. He was of the opinion that New Yorkers hated him very much, thank you! But MJ was currently licking some serious counter evidence off of her fingers. The kids from earlier didn’t make his point either, nor did the grandmas and that vendor.

But J. Jonah Jameson wasn’t the original pioneer of Spider-Man hate nor the sole torch bearer.

“No one likes vigilantes,” Peter said slowly, trying to explain it the way he saw it. “However, I think most people understand that, when they see me, I’m here to help. Not to hurt. Not to hinder. But Pro Heroes-”

He stopped mid-sentence. No group was a monolith with entirely unified opinions about things, let alone New Yorkers. But if there ever was a monolith, he thought, it had to be Pro Heroes. Except… they weren’t either.

He thought about how many Pro Heroes turned their backs on him. How many Pro Heroes failed to recognize his presence at a scene. How many Pro-Heroes looked straight through him. How many Pro Heroes mangled his name even when he’d just introduced himself. Such gestures always stung. He always hated it. The cruelty. The lack of acknowledgment. The superiority.

But how many Pro Heroes pretended he wasn’t there because they were assholes, and how many of them pretended out of plausible deniability? Out of a desire to let him keep doing what he was doing?

Uncomfortable with that, Peter rubbed the back of his neck. It was easier to think everyone hated him. It made it so much easier to hate them right back. The few kind Pro Heroes he’d met—the ones who fed him or helped him or indulged his antics—were just exceptions to the rule in this framework, not pivotal enough to shake his dislike of Pro Hero society as a whole.

But it was shaken now, pitched slightly askew. While Peter was still against the dichotomy of a class system that positioned some Quirk bearers as superior to others, the mere idea that Pro Heroes might not hate certain well-meaning vigilantes acting outside of their system…

Well. It was something.

MJ watched Peter silently panic as his whole worldview turned on its head. “I think New York likes you just fine,” she concluded.

Easy for her to say.

-

You could set a clock by Eddie Brock’s routine. Even so, Peter felt a rush of relief at the sight of him walking down the opposite side of the street. He had a coffee cup in his left hand, and he was muttering under his breath. His lack of a phone headset or earpiece didn’t occur to Peter until much later. At the moment, he was just happy that he hadn’t over promised anything to MJ.

MJ had helped time pass quickly. Peter so rarely ran into people he knew while in the mask. A middle school teacher had gaped at him from up close and personal after Peter saved him from turning into mush under the Rhino’s feet. May had chewed him out for smudging up her windows, not realizing she’d caught her nephew mere seconds before he snuck back into their home. Jameson had a full blown temper tantrum after Peter pulled him out of a car wreck.

But MJ was in none of those circumstances. Furthermore, she wasn’t angry or confused at his presence. If anything, she was openly curious about him. She asked questions. Solicited his opinions. Encouraged his thoughts. He caught himself ranting for a full ten minutes about modern American Pro Hero society, and he never noticed because MJ had egged him on, interjecting only facts and current events to back him up. It left him feeling so riled and pumped up about his frustration that, if Alexander Pierce himself crossed Peter’s path, well…

They would have  _ words _ .

But MJ was an accelerant. Always had been. As his ire cooled off, Peter recalled this somewhat sheepishly. While he was moderately reckless, his measure of an acceptable amount of danger was more like a controlled burn than a raging wildfire. It made sense to make himself a target when it came to villains and criminals. It did not make sense to draw the Agency’s fire too. He’d had just a taste of what it was like being hunted by “one of the good guys”. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.

He was thinking of how to explain this to MJ without seeming like someone of flimsy principles when they finally caught up to Eddie Brock. He sighed with relief, then turned to MJ to come up with a plan to approach him if she really must talk to him. Something subtle, he thought. An accidental crossing of paths closer to Central Park, he thought. Someplace full of pedestrians and onlookers. A place too full of people to warrant an impromptu visit by that strange man in the black suit.

But MJ hadn’t waited for his signal. No, by the time he turned to her, she was already across the street, jogging after Brock. Worse yet, Brock ducked into a long narrow alleyway between two buildings, well out of sight of everyone.

Swearing, Peter hurled himself after MJ. “M- Michelle!”

“Why are you hollering?” she groused, pausing at the corner of the alley to look at him. “I can’t talk to him across the street, can I?”

_ Accelerant _ , Peter reminded himself irritably. “I told you, we need to be careful how we approach this guy.”

“I am always careful,” MJ said in a blatant lie. She followed it up by walking into the alley, calling out Brock’s name.

Peter’s only alternative to following her in was hauling her over his shoulder and web swinging away. He was pretty sure that would be kidnapping at that point. She’d never forgive him either, and he’d never forgive himself for giving her such an easy opportunity to prove his hypothesis about her harboring a secret shark Quirk. No matter how high he took her, she  _ would _ bite him. Whether it was with human teeth or with teeth modified by a physical Quirk was rather inconsequential.

Groaning, Peter followed her, instantly feeling horrible about it. The beginnings of a headache started compressing his skull. Worse, his spidey sense was reeling. Although the feeling wasn’t similar to what he’d get when someone was actively trying to murder him, it still felt like Peter was being repeatedly flicked in the head by a ruler. Something was there, and Peter was stupid for ignoring it.

Except… the alley was empty. Brock was nowhere to be seen.

Just as confused, MJ walked further in, eyes darting around the tight space. Peter followed her. She tugged idly on one of the side doors leading into the left building, shrugging when it resisted her. “He must have went through one of these,” she guessed. Her tone was doubtful, but her theory made sense. The alley ended in a dead end. How else would he have slipped by them?

MJ tested the next door, then crossed the alley to test the one directly across from it. Handles jiggled but the doors didn’t open.

“Gonna test every door now?”

MJ shot him a mutinous look. “I can take a hint,” she said quietly.

“Can you?” someone asked. And that someone wasn’t Peter.

MJ’s eyes darted behind Peter. Peter whipped around, backing up until he knocked into MJ. She grabbed his forearm but otherwise didn’t try to get past him, didn’t try to break the defensive wall his body created between them and Eddie Brock.

Brock was leaning against the first door MJ tried, watching them idly. He smirked briefly before pushing himself away from the metal surface.

Peter tensed as he approached. Despite the warning bells in his head, Peter had never been intimidated by him. Brock wasn’t an especially tall man, barely taller than Peter himself. What he was, however, was an extremely broad and densely built man. Peter always thought Brock jogged like he expected to run through a wall. Right now, he believed the man absolutely could—and if not a wall, then at least Spider-Man himself.

And his intense, bloodshot eyes were now fixated on Peter’s face. “I was fine ignoring you when you were alone.” As Brock got closer and closer, he seemed to almost swell in size. “But I draw the line when you bring a plus one, kid.” The tiny warning bell in Peter’s head was fully shrieking now. “You-”

Whatever he was about to say was lost to the ravages of time—and the surprise that came with an intrepid college reporter sticking a recorder in his face.

While Peter was imitating a stone statue, MJ had stepped around him. “Michelle Jones, editor of the Empire State Beacon.”

Brock was frozen. He looked at Peter. Then he looked at MJ. Some of the hostility shed itself from Brock’s expression, leaving only flabbergasted shock. “…You’re from a school  _ newspaper _ ?” he hissed.

The way he said it was like they had instead admitted to stealing food from orphans or burning blankets meant for the homeless. Either way, the outrage was disproportionate. And rude.

But Peter’s spidey sense was dying off slowly nevertheless, like whatever it had reacted to was losing its potency. He loosened his tense muscles and slipped almost self-consciously out of the ready stance he’d dropped into. He wasn’t about to get in a fist fight with a reporter, he soothed himself, but he watched Brock closely nevertheless.

In the meantime, MJ was completely ignoring the man’s tone. “Mr. Brock, did you know you were declared missing in San Francisco eighteen months ago?”

Once more, Brock looked at Peter. Then at MJ. Then at Peter again, squinting. He seemed like waiting for a punchline, and, when it didn’t come, he became even more aggravated. “I was there, wasn’t I? What of it?”

“I have questions for you about your disappearance,” MJ replied brightly.

Brock grimaced. He backed up a step out of range of the recorder, hands raising. The throbbing beat of danger in the back of Peter’s head finally died out completely. “Ugh. No comment.”

“Aw, come on, Mr. Brock,” Peter said, belatedly trying to back MJ up. She needed a story, he remembered. “Not even an itty bitty quote?” MJ could spin a story out of scraps, but she still needed something to work with.

“Shut up. And stop it with that Mr. Brock crap. It’s  _ Eddie _ .” Brock—or Eddie—focused on Peter again. “And I thought you were following me for something a little more dire than a shitty little scoop. I’m disappointed.” Despite his words, he shot Peter a smile that had a touch too many teeth. It wasn’t kind. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Thought maybe you got a hint after that little run-in with my eight-foot monster of a bodyguard.”

Still trapped in a cycle of relief that he didn’t have to fight and doubt that things couldn’t end so peacefully, Peter didn’t quite register everything Eddie said right away. But when it clicked, he blurted out, “That was  _ your _ bodyguard?”

This comment did what MJ’s questions did not—it knocked Eddie Brock’s jaw loose. The man gaped at Peter unattractively, eyes wide with surprise. Then he groaned and covered his face with his hand. He turned around completely, pacing a few steps away from them. He mumbled something about being surrounded by “absolute, fucking idiots”. Peter could have sworn something responded to him.

But before Peter could think on that too long, Eddie came back to them, arms crossed over his chest. He had a pinched expression. “So, let me get this straight,” he said flatly, “You’re  _ not _ the idiot the Central Hero Agency has tailing me.”

MJ was looking at Peter curiously. Peter’s face was heating up under his mask. He knew exactly who Eddie Brock’s “idiot” was. “I’m a vigilante, Mr. Br- um. Eddie. The Agency would have me in a jail cell before they offered me a job.”

“You’d be surprised who the Agency is willing to hire,” Eddie said darkly.

Peter scowled at that. Neither Wade’s name nor his alias had been dropped in the chat, but Peter felt the insult anyway. Peter was not a fan of Eddie Brock.

“‘ _ To pursue truth hidden in lies and facts hidden in fiction is to give up safety, eschew stability, and dangle your bloody reputation above hungry sharks, _ ’” MJ quoted, reading it from her phone. “‘ _ And it is an absolutely vital undertaking by the modern citizen. _ ’ Isn’t that what you said?”

“Back when I believed in bullshit,” Eddie said. He looked distracted, though.

“What a mouthful,” Peter said dryly. “You must have been a pro at padding essays.”

“Shut up.” Eddie side eyed him before he turned back to MJ with only a fraction of the hostility. “Look, I’m not budging. Give up this article on me. There’s no story here.” A self-deprecating smile pulled at his face as he shrugged. He backed up a step. “I’m just an unemployed guy on the wrong side of forty who burned all of his professional contacts. That’s all. There are far more interesting people in New York City, kid. Go chase after them instead.”

He did an awkward, sarcastic little wave and walked off towards the entrance of the alley, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.

But MJ wasn’t quite done with him yet. “People like Carlton Drake?”

Eddie froze mid-step. Then, with his back on them still, he laughed quietly. There was an undertone to it that made the hair on Peter’s body stand on end. Eddie turned slowly, smiling. “That’s a chicken and the egg argument right there.” His smile took a nasty edge. “Am I here because Drake is here… or is Drake here because of me?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“And this is not a game, Miss Jones,” Eddie replied. “And certainly not appropriate content for your little school paper.”

“Shows what you know,” MJ retorted, pushing past Peter. “That prick is sauntering up and down our campus, using our name, our reputation, and our facilities to make the case for his  _ product _ .”

She was bristling, and obviously so. Peter once again felt out of the loop for something that seemed like very local news. He was aware of the Life Foundation because of his research on Eddie Brock, but he wasn’t aware of Drake's connection to his own school. But now that he thought about it, he did remember seeing Drake here and there on campus but had assumed he was a guest lecturer. He resolved to pay more attention in the future.

“Of course he is,” Eddie snapped back at her. “He’s an opportunist. Some of the most famous Pro Heroes in the world are associated with your school, including the only two known subjects of the world’s first Quirk enhancement therapy.” He barked out a laugh. “If he can convince anybody that their silence right now equals endorsement, his stock prices would go through the roof. Millions of dollars are at stake here.”

“But you of all people know what he’s like,” MJ said. “You’re the one who exposed what he was doing in San Francisco-”

“Yeah?” Eddie interrupted, reddening in anger. “And what came of that? He got a slap on the wrist and a multi-million-dollar podcast deal. I lost my job, I got blacklisted, and then I got run out of town. You want to follow in my footsteps? Be my guest.”

They glared at each other for a moment before Eddie caved, sighing as he rubbed a hand over his mouth hard enough that Peter could hear calluses scraping over stubble. “Write about literally anything else,” Eddie pleaded, quieter now. “Your mascot. The price of food. The smell around an odd part of your campus. Literally anything else.”

There was silence for a moment. Gradually, the sounds of the city crept in. Pedestrians talking to each other and their phones. Engines revving and idling. Wind gliding through and catching the few leaves left before winter.

“I can’t ignore this,” MJ said after a long moment of just them looking at each other.

“That’s what I miss most about being your age, that ill-gotten sense of immortality.” Eddie’s jaw tightened. He looked back at the street behind him almost longingly before coming back to Peter and MJ. “Let’s pretend things go the way you want. You get your evidence. You get your quotes. You get your story. Yay.” He spread his hands in a sarcastic rendition of jazz hands. MJ was already scowling. Admiration or not, Eddie Brock was creeping closer and closer to getting bopped in the nose. “You get that story printed. You get readers to read that evidence. And… then what?” 

For the first time, MJ looked wrong footed. “P-people know the truth!” she said. But she was already making a face, and Peter knew exactly why. She shared the truth about the teacher sharing answer keys with Hero Track, and she’d got nothing but hate and aggression. No one wanted to know the truth. Not at all.

“The truth is a poor substitute for Kevlar, kid,” Eddie said knowingly, and MJ flinched. He pressed his point. “Drake is a vindictive and cruel pest. Walk away before he knows your name.”

MJ slowly shook her head. “I-”

But Eddie kept pressing, stepping closer. Unnerved, Peter got between the two of them, but it was like he wasn’t even there. His skin buzzed unpleasantly as someone activated their Quirk—someone who wasn’t Peter or MJ.

Eddie’s pupils were tiny pinpricks, focused on MJ, and his voice was terribly, terribly soft. “You think he’ll forgive you? You think he’ll let your paper survive? Your reputation? Your future? Your family’s future? You think he’ll move on gracefully? Think again.” MJ grabbed Peter’s arm slowly, tugging on it. Peter didn’t know if she was trying to pull him away or hang on. He half-turned to her anyways just as Eddie whispered, “You think your teachers will protect you when he comes around with a  _ shovel _ ?”

MJ’s whole body tensed. Her grip on Peter’s forearm became needle-like, and her face was wooden. Worse, she said nothing. She didn’t even blink. Neither did Eddie.

“Buddy,” Peter said finally, “you need to back off.” He didn’t recognize his own voice nor the threat that rolled through it. But he was ready to follow through, even when that unsettlingly intense gaze swept from MJ back to Peter.

But Eddie submitted. He blinked, his pupils normal sized again. His body language relaxed as he retreated, putting steps between them again. Something strange, like regret, passed over his expression. His eyes were on MJ again

“I like your moxie, kid, but you’re biting off more than you can chew. Take it from me. It doesn’t matter how honest or truthful you are. You threaten his bottom line? He. Will. Bury. You.” Eddie ran a hand through his hair distractedly. Then, with studied nonchalance, he turned around and walked away, waving idly with two fingers as he made his way back to the street.

“You’re supposed to be in the business of saving lives, Spider-Boy!” he called out over his shoulder. “So, save a life.”

No one stopped the ex-reporter from leaving this time. MJ’s hands slowly slipped from his arm, falling to her side.

“Never meet your heroes, right?” Peter joked weakly. He turned to her, already armed with half of an idea of what was going to happen next. MJ would be seething, of course. The more people told her to be quiet, the louder she wanted to be. She was a righteous person with a passion for standing up for the underdog. She was an unbending advocate and, when need be, a wall. A pillar, even. An inquisitive mind always knocking at status quo’s door, demanding answers.

He expected fury. But what he got from MJ was much worse.

He’d seen a small flare of vulnerability in her after their office got vandalized. She didn’t hide it this time. She was shaking, expression crumbling. Half a sob left her throat before she shoved her fist in her mouth, giving him the impression of a slowly deflating balloon.

He crowded her on instinct, wrapping his arms around her, and she shoved closer to him, gripping him so tight, he felt her nails through his suit. He held her as she shook and muffled her feelings into his chest.

A few minutes later, they both were sitting on two steps outside of the alleyway doors. Peter felt wrung dry. Next him, MJ was sitting forward, hunched, her elbows on her knees.

“Uh, that was fucking embarrassing,” she muttered thickly, a hand over his face. “And it’s all my damn fault too.”

“There’s nothing wrong with letting it out,” Peter said. He must have misunderstood because she was immediately shaking her head.

“No. His Quirk. I knew what it was, and I thought I could push past it. Stupid.”

“His Quirk?” Peter echoed. “What’s his Quirk?”

“It’s empathy.” MJ sniffled noisily before sitting back. “He can’t read minds, just… vibes and feelings. He’s very good at it, finding holes in people’s armor.”

Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “And the hole in your armor is… school?”

Her reddened eyes made their way over to Peter. “I… am going to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else. It’s about the teachers at my school.”

Peter leaned forward eagerly, provoking a wry, tired smile out of MJ. “What is it?” he asked, mind racing with the possibilities. MJ always groused about how the school was run, but she rarely made any specific claims—outside of the ones she had evidence for, that is. What did she know that he didn’t?

MJ’s smile broadened. “They’re… actually great. Most of them, anyway. I’d give them about a B- in hiring practices.” Peter was utterly confused. She laughed at the way he cocked his head. “They’re doing their best and I admire them quite a bit! They’re trying to prepare a generation of egoistical, power-obsessed teenagers and young adults for a profession that cannot be prepared for. A job that’s dangerous. A career that will likely take their lives. The faculty’s hearts are in the right places, and their first thoughts are about their students. How to make things better. How to protect them more. How to be a better resource.” Her expression darkened. “And yet…”

MJ let out a gusty sigh. She hunched in on herself again, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Peter realized he recognized this pose—not from her, though. Never from her. But rather from himself. He’d sat in that very same pose on many rooftops on many nights, nursing one hurt or another. “They’ve disappointed you.”

After a beat, she nodded. “I exposed a teacher who was enabling cheating in Hero Track. His coworkers were shocked and angry—and for good reason. After he got over being the last one to know, Dr. McCoy even thanked me, praising me for my commitment to the truth. But the backlash I got from my peers, the so-called Heroes…” She made a face at the opposite wall. “Some of them were mad that they couldn’t skate by anymore, but the rest of them were mad because… because I wasn’t being a good sidekick.”

She looked at him with big eyes then, and Peter scrambled for an answer. “I don’t follow.”

MJ snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t. A guy with a Quirk like yours… you were probably treated like a prince in school.”

“You’d be surprised,” Peter muttered. “Anyway, continue?”

MJ seemed like she wanted to comment on that. She decided against it, saying instead, “My peers thought that I stepped out of line. That I’d betrayed them. That I jeopardized their futures when I should have been ensuring it.” She rolled her eyes, clearing her throat with annoyance. She waved one of her hands dismissively. “And I knew they would! In fact, I  _ anticipated _ it.”

That sounded like her. MJ rarely had a Plan A without also working out the details for Plans B through M. Where Peter tended to paralyze himself with his own thoughts, MJ had a strategy for every contingency. Logic steered MJ. Fear steered Peter. Always.

“But when I reported that to the teachers,” MJ continued slowly, “they asked why I went forward with the story. If I really had to publish it, why didn’t I have one of my Hero Track reporters stick their names on the byline? Why did I decide to stir up trouble instead?”

Peter felt clammy all of a sudden. His heartbeat slammed an angry beat just under his ear. His spine felt as if it had been replaced by wood and his muscles by rocks. He said nothing. He stayed still. Silent.

MJ sighed. “And then, that very day, I got hit in the face. Then our office got vandalized. Then my dorm got trashed. Then my faculty advisor was yanked away.” She curled around her legs again, resting her chin on her knees. She mumbled, “So when Eddie Brock makes comments about the teachers doing nothing to protect me… let’s just say it hits a little too close to home and leave it at that, okay?”

She shot him a narrow-eyed look over her shoulder. Too late, Peter nodded once. Satisfied, she looked away from him, staring back at the opposite wall again. She was a picture of a resigned, tired sort of peace, completely at odds with the inner turmoil she’d provoked in Peter.

He hadn’t known most of what she shared. Bits and pieces, for sure, but not the context. He assumed a lot of what was happening was a temper tantrum by a select few rather than a pattern of actions designed to put MJ back in her place. He felt very small. For all he grumbled and criticized the two-class system, he’d failed to put the pieces together. Peter felt like a bad friend.

All of the pieces were there in front of him. Wade, manipulating his camera, commenting that no one used a bat on someone else’s belongings without imagining it was their face. The spray-painted word,  _ traitor _ , in their office.

“They-” Peter burst out. He clenched his fists together—his teeth too—but only briefly. “What a missed opportunity!  _ They could have stood up for you. _ They- ESU is so well known! They have such a platform they could be using. They could make it clear right here and right now to all of ESU that Support Track and Hero Track are equally important. That neither is better than the other. What a waste.”

Fuming now, Peter stood, marching to the other wall. He turned sharply, hands on his hips. MJ watched him, eyebrows high. “And they wouldn’t even be the first ones to try it,” Peter told her. “There’s schools everywhere in the world that dismiss this stupid dichotomy of sidekick and hero. Even in the US, there are whole states that practically ignore the results of Quirk assessments—or, better yet, have passed laws to make things more equitable.” Vibrating with his annoyance, he bit out, “I think you’re wrong, Michelle. I think they all suck.”

It felt good to say that. Almost cathartic. He also felt like he lost about a hundred points off of his hard-earned maturity leveling, but meh. You win some, you lose some.

And Peter just won MJ’s laugh. “They’re good people, Spidey,” she chided him, standing. When she looked up at him, the corners of her eyes crinkled.

“But even good people can do bad things when they’re comfortable with the status quo,” Peter replied.

That made MJ pause. She repeated what he said without a sound, distracted for a moment. Then, sensing his eyes, she looked back at him. “Well said,” she said, sounding slightly impressed. Then a pained look crossed over her face. “Hey, thanks for today. Everything. Even the… bad parts. Just, um. Don’t tell Peter. Okay?”


	8. Chapter 8

Carlton Drake was a difficult man to unbox.

Peter traded some of his Brock stalking hours to follow the self-proclaimed futurist throughout Manhattan. Drake’s schedule wasn’t as easy to figure out as Brock’s. He seemed to have no real routine. He spent a large chunk of the day holed up in a corporate setting, sure, but never in one space. He visited the in-construction Life Foundation building exactly once, standing outside of it like a man surveying his future kingdom before ducking back into his chauffeured car for a trip that took him all the way from the Financial District to Upper Manhattan. To Columbia University, specifically, where he gave a presentation. 

He ate out every day, tipped well, and said please and thank you. He made long phone calls constantly. To investors and stakeholders, his voice rang with poise and confidence. To researchers, his responses were both intelligent and thoughtful. When starry eyed fans were intercepted by Drake’s bodyguards, Drake intervened and spoke to every single one of them, posing for selfies and signing books. 

In comparison to, say, Eddie Brock himself, Carlton Drake seemed like a put together, confident, and entirely trustworthy man. If May met him, she’d probably fawn over him and his gentlemanly manners. He had a perfect smile and always seemed to know what to say. He seemed, on the surface, a good guy.

And yet, the more Peter dug up on him on the internet, the dirtier he looked. It was buried deep, beyond the first couple pages of any search engine, but it was there. Eddie Brock had hardly been the first person to start putting two and two together.

Predatory business practices. MIA test subjects. Stolen patents. Money laundering. Dangerous procedures. Aggressive NDAs. Missing researchers. Insider trading. Different scandals followed him at different points of his career. He seemed to have successfully rebranded himself in the last ten years as an avid student of science eager to bring his findings to the world, but those who claimed to know him said his one goal in life had never changed. 

Carlton Drake wanted to advance the human condition in every way possible. Longevity. Wealth. Health. Comfort. Now Quirks. And he didn’t particularly care who he had to hurt to do it.

Given what he’d seen of Drake, Peter did briefly—and wistfully—consider the possibility that maybe Drake learned his lesson the last time, that maybe he was trying to redeem himself. After all, Quirk enhancement would be transformative for people whose Quirks were excessively dangerous, or who had chronic issues with their Quirk’s manifestation. 

Otto was a perfect example of someone Drake could help. He’d inherited his mother’s multi-limbed Quirk like all of his other siblings, but half of them were paralyzed. He’d invented several contraptions to help them move anyway, but what if Otto never had to weigh himself down with 70 pounds of excess protheses everyday just to have a full range of motion? 

But Eddie Brock didn’t seem to think people like Otto weighed heavily on Drake’s mind. It was all about the money, and Peter couldn’t help but come to the same conclusion. Surely if Drake had redemption in mind, he wouldn’t have destroyed Brock’s life with such an easy, professional smile.

But Spider-Man’s hands were tied. What was he supposed to do? Web the guy to a pole until he was picked up by the authorities? He would be out in seconds. Besides, Peter didn’t know how to deal with the kind of villain who didn’t throw punches, poison water towers, or snatch purses. It seemed to him that the only way forward against such a man was MJ’s method—to air out his dirty laundry. To let loose the skeletons in his closet. But if Brock had already tried—and failed—what could Peter do? Even MJ couldn’t do any better than a seasoned, award winning reporter. (And MJ shouldn’t try.)

It irked Peter. He preferred to deal with the obvious villains. The kind that wielded their Quirks against the personal and public health of their neighbors. Those types of villains, it seemed, were always in conflict with Pro Hero Society, and Peter had more than his fair share of these types of enemies. He was a magnet for them, but he imagined most Pro Heroes were too. 

Rivalries and nemeses, territorialism and competitiveness… they were most certainly alive and well. 

The Quirks of Pro Heroes were not any stronger or weaker than villains. Their intelligence and strategy were about the same too. The only thing that kept Pro Heroes on top, it seemed, was the unity and shared missions of the Pro Hero Agencies. The smaller agencies, directed by the larger Central Hero Agency (for better or worse), had resources villains could only dream of, and the collective manpower and intelligence to stop an invading army in its tracks. Even several alien ones.

Villains, on the other hand, couldn’t agree long enough to order a pizza, let alone establish something that was an equivalent of an agency. Instead, they tended to hold loose alliances. Clubs. Brotherhoods and sisterhoods. Homeowner associations. Because their resources were so few, villains also tended to know and respect their own weight class. Weaker alliances knew how to avoid the Avengers’ attention, as the Avengers were the ones called when the whole damn world was in danger. They had a much higher degree of success in their goals if the only people coming after them were similarly weaker. Like lower level agencies like the Fantastic Four or the Defenders or the Deadpool Corps. (Sorry, Wade.) Or even vigilantes like Spider-Man. (Sorry, Peter.)

The only major villain alliance Peter was aware of in New York City that were ready to throw down with the Avengers was PUAHTA. Or, the “People United Against Hero Tyranny Alliance”. They were itching to fight and humiliate the Avengers but were otherwise fairly inactive in and around Manhattan. Peter himself certainly never ran into any of their members. 

In fact, he would still have been ignorant about them if Hawkeye hadn’t been recently caught commenting that PUAHTA was the sound of a fart out of a whoopie cushion. Or a curse word in another language. 

It should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t. Shared in the context of a casual morning show, it seemed completely innocuous. Peter had laughed. A lot of people laughed. Comedy skits were done. Viral tweets went out. The comment was aired on all hours of public news.

Spider-Man should have been less surprised to see the explosion that following weekend.

-

It was around lunchtime on what had been quiet all day, until it wasn’t.

The shock wave was intense enough that Peter was thrown, mid-swing, into a rooftop garden. He got pried out of an earthen pot by a big man with no mouth. Brushing leaves and dirt off of his suit, Peter blinked afterimages out of his eyes before it clicked what had happened. Then he and his silent hero joined the rest of the people hurrying to the railing to watch the devastation. 

The explosion had come from the Avenger Tower. 

Despite the fanfare, damage was minimal; the tower was made of sturdier stuff than its neighboring buildings. Everywhere else, though, there was shattered glass and cracked concrete. Peter hopped up on the railing, ignoring the gasps of his fellow onlookers. He looked straight down to see cars flashing in time with the tinny sounds of far-off alarms. The street level was already starting to fill with emergency services—officers and ambulances alike. It was only a matter of time before the Pro Heroes showed up, and, by then, the Avengers would have mopped the floor with whoever attacked. 

Dropping to his usual crouch, Peter looked up at the penthouse of the Avengers tower, expecting to see at least a combination of heroes—Thor, perhaps? He hadn’t been seen in public for a while. The Hulk, probably not. Bruce Banner was testifying before Congress for… something. Peter didn’t recall what. The Falcon was probably out too. He and Captain America tended to favor Brooklyn over Manhattan, and it didn’t seem like anyone at the Agency had the nerve to tell Steven Grant Rogers that they’d prefer them to prioritize Manhattan instead.

The longer Peter watched, though, the more it became apparent that there was no combination of Avengers. Only one. 

The seconds ticked on the clock. People murmured behind him, speculations flying back and forth. The more the Tower continued to flash with firepower, the more morbid those speculations became. The metal of the railing warped slightly under his grip. 

The Avengers didn’t need backup, Peter reminded himself fiercely. They were New York’s flagship agency. The vanguard. The tip of the spear. Any one of them on their own could do ten times the work of a guy like Peter. Especially if that Avenger was Iron Man.

But the fight continued on without a decisive victory, and Peter’s worry grew legs. 

Months ago, James Rhodes spotted him in a hallway and invited him to join Captain America’s presentation. He gave it so freely, like Peter wasn’t just some useless sidekick. Like he wasn’t the kid who was picked last for a game and assigned to some far corner no one came to. Like Peter was just as important as every “real Hero” in that room. 

That simple acknowledgement by Iron Man himself didn’t pierce the gloomy haze of his thoughts that day. But it was piercing it now.

Because real Heroes—regardless of what they were labeled—didn’t wait to be asked to save the day. They just showed up.

The sky lit up as a torpedo took out half of a wall. A collective sound of dismay followed it. “Shit,” Peter whispered. He lurched forward, instinctively coiling up to spring. 

He was stopped only by a hand on his leg. Still tensed up, Peter looked down to see his mouthless knight in shining armor. Beyond him, at least ten others watched, looking scared and worried. Peter’s silent friend let go and stacked two K signs on top of each other, tapping them together twice. One woman echoed the first man’s sentiment verbally. Be careful. 

“You got it,” Peter said. He jumped off the railing into a freefall. He immediately spun back around. He put a flat hand in front of his face, his palm nearly touching his chin. He pushed it straight out about six inches, making eye contact with the helpful stranger, then he thwipped away. 

He hoped he did it right. ESU taught him the bare minimum of sign language for tactical reasons, and there wasn’t much room on the battlefield to say thank you.

As focused as he was on getting over to Iron Man, Peter couldn’t help but smile under his mask.

New York likes you just fine, MJ said with absolute confidence. One of these days, Peter might actually start to believe her.

-

Spider-Man announced his arrival with a cheerful hello and two size eleven shoes. The first was met with confusion. The second was met with an  _ oof  _ and a marauding invader flying across the room. Peter knew how to make an entrance. 

Iron Man had been doing some serious work here. Peter counted at least ten slumped over bodies, and that was just in this room. The space stank of burnt fabric, sweat, and the sharp ozone smell of Iron Man’s repulsors. 

Nearly missing Spider-Man, Iron Man hurled a large, hairy man at one of the most intact walls. He noticed Peter then, startling.

“Mr. Rhodes,” Peter said, hands on his hips. “I think you have a pest problem.”

The only response Peter got was a hoarse—and extremely strained—laugh.

Previously scattered by Iron Man’s defense, the invaders regrouped. Iron Man’s pests were from PUAHTA, that was for sure. The six or so people left swarming the penthouse wore the group’s signature black and purple colors in different styles. One person wore all black and a purple bandana. Another wore a purple frilly dress with black combat boots and a leather jacket. Yet another wore a purple shirt and a black pair of sweatpants. 

Nothing spectacular. Very little gear in sight too. On the street, no one could have told them apart from the rest. But together, it was clear they were united; united in damaging the Avengers’ base, that is. 

Scorch marks and gouges dug through expensive looking tiles. A very large u-shaped couch was a mess of fluffy and charred remains. Giant holes were punched in the walls, and not a single window had survived. Even more tragic, a large flat screen television was shattered to bits. Strangely, the bar in the distance, bearing rows upon rows of crystalline bottles, was fully intact, but who knew for how long.

But Iron Man’s suit really took the cake. The heavy plated red and gold armor looked half-melted in some places and heavily dented in others. One of his eyes in his helmet was flickering on and off and sparking. Rhodes almost seemed to be listing slightly to the side, as if trying to compensate for some hurt.

The villains didn’t give Iron Man and Spider-Man a chance to talk strategy. Instead, they immediately attacked. 

It seemed that by throwing his hat in the ring, Peter had successfully diverted three villains away from Iron Man. However, that also meant that three villains were dead set on writing Spider-Man’s obituary, and they kept Peter on his toes.

Peter had a pretty easy time webbing up the lady who could manifest bombs in her hands. As it turned out, when your Quirk needs your right hand to touch your left hand, you are really easy to incapacitate. But the guy with a physical Quirk was challenging. He had the armor—and physicality—of a very large pangolin, and he gave Peter quite the run for his money. 

Peter got the upper hand eventually. The fourth time the guy came rolling at him, sharp scales bared, well… Peter let him roll right out the broken window. He caught the villain in his web at the very last second, but he didn’t pull him up. Let him dangle and think on what he just did. Even villains could use a time out once in a while.

By the time Peter singled out his third opponent—a potty mouthed person who manifested whips for arms—Iron Man was down to his last assailant too, a thin wane woman in a long dress, too long to be practical in a fight. 

But the woman did not run. She did not grapple. She did not get in a fist fight. Instead, she walked where she needed to go, and that was damaging enough. Her Quirk was sight based, and Iron Man had spent far too much time in her sight already. It had to be some kind of metal Quirk, Peter figured, and she was emboldened to act now that her peers were no longer in her way. 

It was obvious she was responsible for the warping in Iron Man’s suit, and Rhodes was no longer taking to the sky because of it. Instead, Iron Man kept putting obstacles between him and her, blocking her line of sight and trying to hit her with projectiles. But none of them ever made contact, bending away from her just in time.

Just as Peter knocked out his last enemy, the wall between Iron Man and the woman was cracked open by the rebar and concrete debris he’d thrown at her. It exposed his position. Iron Man froze stiffly, then grabbed at his helmet, audibly choking. Leaping off his own enemy, Peter skidded between her and Iron Man, using his own body to break her line of sight.

But her Quirk was never about metal. It was about matter. 

The fabric of his costume twisted around his face like it was alive. It clawed down his throat, held back from tangling in his esophagus only by the resistance of the material and Peter’s desperately grasping fingers. Gagging and blinded, Peter fell to his knees. The fabric started to tear, pulling apart at the seams. 

Then the whine of a damaged repulsor cut through the air, almost drowning out a startled grunt. Peter’s mask relaxed, and he was able to pull it out of his throat. In the throes of an almost animalistic panic, he yanked it off completely, tossing it to the floor as he hacked and wheezed on all fours, his mouth raw and full of saliva. He stayed like that for a while, shaking, his heart raging on as he came to terms to what was certainly a close brush with death.

A metallic thump to his left revealed the Iron Man mask, similarly discarded. It seemed like metal had resisted the woman’s quirk better than the fabric of Peter’s newest suit, but the surface was badly warped. Small but sharp metal shards poked inward like a flower. They were covered in blood. 

Strange, how it took the sight of another’s mask to remind him that he’d lost his own.

Peter tensed, then shot his hand out to steal back what little protected his identity, but a metal boot stepped down on top of it. It did so with a finality that made Peter want to vomit. He stayed there, on all fours, head down and lungs wheezing. 

His spidey sense was telling him that Iron Man’s enemies were out of range or incapacitated enough not to see this, but that wasn’t the reassurance it should have been. The fact that Iron Man himself was standing over Peter blotted out everything else. Even if he successfully outran a man with a full body rocket suit, the repercussions were going to be enormous. The fact that he was a white man with brown hair was more identifying information than Peter had ever let out in his years of moonlighting as Spider-Man.

Peter prepared to bolt anyway. He could web himself a mask in an instant. He could roll right out the broken window to his right, free fall past his pangolin buddy, and websling his ass off. He could do it. He was going to do it. He was about to do it.

Then Iron Man spoke.

“I’m gonna level with you, kid,” he said. “I get it. It’s cruel. But you being here is kind of my worst nightmare, and your mask is my only leverage right now.” 

That was not the voice of James Rhodes Jr. 

It went against Peter’s every habit up until now, but he followed his instinct and looked up into Tony Stark’s bruised and battered face. 

Peter’s mental image of America’s most famous Hero Support was never going to recover from this. There was blood in that precisely angled goatee. A worryingly deep cut next to Stark’s left eye put it there. It was the worst of a series of small surface cuts, but the damage wasn’t limited there. His opposite cheek was swollen and a little purple, and both sides of his jaw showed patterns of deep bruising. The bruising seemed to continue under the warped armor under his throat. 

But perhaps worst of all, those brown eyes were running over Peter’s own face—and were sharpening with recognition. 

Stark lifted one gauntleted hand. “Hold up—do I know you?”

Parker luck struck again. Before today, Peter would have given his left kidney for Tony Stark to notice him. He would have given his left foot for the mere chance to chat with the man who’d given a Plan B to every ESU student like Peter who would grow to regret pledging themselves to Pro Hero Society. 

“Absolutely not,” he retorted, standing.

Stark didn’t seem bothered by this at all, nor was he intimidated. “Hm.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you know how many brownie points I’d get from the Agency for giving them a vigilante wrapped up neat in a bow? I thrive on brownie points.”

Peter’s hackles raised. “Is it more or less than the kudos I’d get from outing the damn sidekick pretending to be a superhero?” he snapped.

Stark laughed at that, smiling. There was blood on his teeth. Abort abort abort, Peter thought. He stood in place instead, hands fisted at his sides. 

After a moment of sizing him up, Stark gestured between them. “Yeah, see, I’m not in the mood to unpack all of this. You want to keep your secret identity under wraps? 

“I was angling for a billboard, actually,” Peter quipped, but despite that, he flinched when Stark leaned forward. Such a small gesture to knock such a huge hole in Peter’s metaphorical shield, Peter thought, kicking himself.

Immediately, Stark withdrew, hesitating. He stayed quiet, sizing Peter up again, his eyebrows pulling into a deep frown. 

He opened his mouth—and was immediately interrupted. 

“Mr. Stark, the Avengers are on route—and very concerned,” a male British voice said out of nowhere. The speaker seemed chiding—and also ubiquitous. Peter looked around, trying to figure out where the speaker was when the voice seemed to come from everywhere. While Peter was doing that, overlapping voices were funneled in, asking if Stark was okay.

“Great,” Stark muttered, not responding to the voices. It must not have been a live connection. “ETA of the closest one.”

“Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” replied the voice precisely.

“Wow. So fast,” Stark said grimly. “My icy heart is melting as we speak.” He tapped his chest and suddenly his suit was dematerializing. 

In under a minute, Iron Man had disappeared into a triangle shaped object, leaving only a barefooted inventor in a pair of jeans and an Black Sabbath shirt. 

“Nanotech,” he said, smugly answering Peter’s unasked question.

Peter would be impressed. Later. When he didn’t feel as if his whole world was being crushed into the size of the device held in Stark’s hand. He felt dizzy. Light headed.

“While Sir is amusing himself, I, for one, would like to thank you for interceding on his behalf, Mr. Parker,” the voice continued smoothly. 

“ _ Parker _ ,” Stark muttered to himself with the tone of someone who’d had a revelation. Peter’s stomach dropped to his feet. Could this day get any worse?

“If it helps,” the voice continued, somewhat hesitantly, “you were identified the moment you entered the facilities via the SIM card in your phone.” Peter’s hand went to the belt under his suit automatically. 

Meanwhile, Stark bent over, picking up Peter’s mask. “Not a burner phone, huh?” he said distractedly, rubbing it in. “What a rookie move.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of disabling it while you are with us, as you are currently not under NDA,” the voice said promptly.

It occurred to Peter that the voice was waiting for a response. “How… efficient and terrifying, sir,” Peter offered faintly.

Stark pivoted, pointing at Peter. “Don’t. His ego is large enough as is.”

Peter couldn’t take any more of this. “Are you arresting me, Mr. Stark?” he demanded.

The question took Stark off-guard. He looked up from where he was examining Peter’s lens. Whatever he read in Peter’s face made his mouth flatten. He looked down at the smashed and ruined tiles, then back at the closest sprawled body of someone who tried to kill him. He tossed Peter’s mask back at him without looking.

“Don’t be stupid,” Stark said quietly. “I’m not that ungrateful. I should have said that first. Before JARVIS.” He hesitated, then said with complete sincerity, “Thanks, Spider-Man. You saved my ass.”

“ETA is 45 seconds,” JARVIS reminded them.

“Right. Come with me.” Stark waved a hand at his bar, and the whole wall ascended. The pretty bottles behind the bar had been a hologram the entire time. Now that the wall was rising, Peter could see that it was reinforced, closing in a tiny safe room with a screen, a couch, and a minifridge. “Get inside. I can explain away me as JARVIS autopiloting Iron Man, but I can’t explain you.”

The Avengers didn’t know Stark piloted the Iron Man suit? “They saw me, you know,” Peter said, referring to the men and women on the floor. 

“30 seconds,” said JARVIS. 

Uncertain but wary of the time limit, Peter went into the safe room. Stark promised Peter wasn’t going to jail, but that promise could fly out the window the second another Avenger arrived. Who knew what the next one would think about spiders?

Stark grimaced, rubbing a hand over his goatee. “I know. I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry, kid. I’m great at lying to my friends.” There was an odd, almost self-deprecating note to that. Then the wall started coming down. “Mr. Parker, was it? You and I have a lot to talk about.” With a faint crooked smirk, Stark wiggled fingers in a wave before he shoved his hands in his pockets. Then the wall came down with a small rush of air, sealing Peter into the safe room.

The silence of the space swept through him like a physical presence. All he could hear was his own breathing and his own labored heartbeat. He spun around once, slowly, taking in the walls before letting himself sink into the couch. He put his mask back on, but it was a futile gesture.

He’d just walked into a prison of his own volition, after all. And the warden already knew his name.

-

Peter’s cheek was pressed against the cold metal of an unforgiving tabletop. It was the only thing keeping him awake enough to contemplate the mistakes he’d made that day.

Like the fact that he was maskless. Again. Like the fact that he hadn’t bounced yet. Again. Like the fact that he was waiting on Stark. 

Again. 

“Brilliant,” Stark said, stretching Peter’s mask under some sort of virtual microscope. “Just brilliant.”

Peter sat up, propping his chin on his hand as he blinked slowly at the hunched over form of the Avengers’ one and only sidekick. It had been the longest seven hours of Peter’s life. As JARVIS promised, Peter’s phone had been bricked. The small fridge in the safe room had been filled with water bottles and unappetizing meal bars apparently meant to tide someone over for at least three days. Peter had consumed them all in about three hours.

By the time Stark fetched him, Peter was starving again but too embarrassed to mention it. Stark was talking a mile a minute, enthused in a way he rarely was. He’d ushered Peter into a private elevator, which took them down to one of Stark’s many labs in the tower. On any other day, Peter would be vibrating with excitement over the sight of completed and half completed equipment for the Avengers. Stark Industries was the leading provider of gear for Pro Heroes, after all, and many designs came directly out of a lab just like this. Peter should have been happy. He should have been thrilled.

Instead, he was stunned and tired. Instead, he pulled up a stool and sat at the emptiest table. He was trying to quietly decompress, and he’d given up his mask again to do it. To breathe. To consider the fact that, with a friend like Peter Parker, Spider-Man didn’t need enemies.

“Awesome,” Stark muttered. “As far as responsive lenses go, these are a little clunky, but decent, given you must have done this yourself. But the fabric… you sandwiched a layer of your own webbing between two layers of standard cellulose linen weave, right? And you somehow stabilized the polymer adhesive so it doesn’t dissolve too.” He yanked Peter’s mask out of the line of the microscope and stretched it tight, holding it up to his naked eye. “Is it stab proof?”

Peter was a little too tired to deal with this version of Tony Stark. He was inquisitive and extra chatty. “Stab resistant.” He waved an idle hand. “Don’t ask me how I know that.”

Stark looked at him, blinking. He’d been talking out loud—and directly to Peter, nonetheless—but he seemed startled to see Peter was still there. To remember another human under the temptation of an inventor’s glee. He put down the mask, clearing his throat responsibly. “I imagine you do a lot of testing in the field,” Stark said neutrally.

“I don’t exactly have a lab,” Peter replied. He crossed his arms over his chest. He was feeling grumpy. “And before you accuse me of stealing the weave, I’ll have you know that they were scraps meant for the dump.”

“Certainly explains the stitching,” was all Stark said to that, going back to Peter’s mask. He looked at it for a moment longer before abruptly pivoting to Peter. “Can I see your webshooters? I’ve always wanted to take a look.” 

Stark’s curiosity seemed genuine, and buckling down on this was a poor thank you for Stark keeping his promise not to arrest him. So Peter took one off and pushed it over to Stark. Dropping Peter’s mask, Stark snatched it up like a boy given free range in a candy shop. Stark had invented an entire damn AI and a nanotech suit of armor. He had no business looking so thrilled over what barely amounted to more than the functional equivalent of a silly string can.

What a complicated person.

Peter’s previous experience with Stark was that of a dour, sharp, brilliant, and utterly paranoid man. It was hard to reconcile that with the man in front of him and his too wide smile. Stark was way more interested in  _ how  _ Peter did what he did rather than  _ what  _ he did. He even sprayed himself in the face with the web on accident, and all that provoked was a loud bark of a laugh.

Stark pried it off before it could stick. “Well done. I always admire innovation.” His fingers tapped over the ugly, uneven edge of Peter’s welding attempts and his expression twisted with something close to pained nostalgia. Then he promptly handed the webshooter back to Peter. “I’m less jazzed about your blatant disregard for personal safety, your recklessness, and, of course, your rap sheet, Mr. Parker.”

Ouch, there it was. As if to soothe the burn, an autonomous robot rolled over with a towel full of falling ice. Peter lifted his hand automatically, dismissing it, and the robot sagged, rolling away.

“Not interested in your opinion about my extracurricular activities,” Peter said, tone muted. It was a lie. He cared very, very much.

“You’re not?” Stark perked up at that. He smirked. “You should be. I have you by the balls, Parker. What would your parents say if they knew you were yucking it up as a vigilante?”

Who knew? “And I suppose that suit you were wearing was just a very convincing cosplay.”

“Well, I am Rhodey’s biggest fan,” Stark said smugly. “If anyone could recreate an Iron Man replica, you bet your ass it would be me. Considering I made the _ first _ one.”

“That was a functioning battle suit, not a replica,” Peter said firmly. “I know it was. I watched you fight.” The bot was trying to give him a smoothie now. He gently pushed the thing away, but not before giving a slight pat on the head. It was trying. “I might be breaking the law, but at least I’m not a hypocrite impersonating a superhero.” Which was also against the law, but he didn’t need to say it. 

Despite this, Stark’s gaze was calm. After a beat, he shrugged and leaned his hip against Peter’s table. “Okay. I suppose you also have me by the balls too. And Rhodey, which-” Stark paused, eyes dropped. 

Peter didn’t press him to finish his thought. Rhodes could claim he had no idea what Stark was doing behind his back, but that being true was incredibly unlikely. And if Rhodes knew Stark was assuming his hero persona even though he was a Hero Support, he would be in as much trouble as Stark. There was no way Stark could tolerate that. They’d been best friends—buddies, confidantes, and partners—for almost longer than Peter had been alive.

Peter felt bad. What a miserable situation he’d put all three of them in.

Stark snapped out of his funk. “What do you want? Money? Fame? Letter of recommendation? I can swing by any agency you want and name drop you. I may be a backup dancer, but everyone’s thirsty for a Stark Industries discount.”

Peter grimaced at the bribery. Who was Stark hurting by pretending to be Rhodes? No one. This was all Peter’s fault. He’d stumbled head first into a secret here, and he was fully expected to expose two men he respected very much. Polite, jocular, friendly Rhodes, and one of Peter’s favorite guest instructors.

“I won’t say anything, sir,” Peter said, defeated. Even if it meant Stark spilled about Spider-Man. Peter wasn’t going to deprive people of a person who could—and did—save the world on a regular basis. 

Spider-Man saved the streets, but the Avengers saved the world. Peter knew his place.

Stark watched him carefully for a moment. “…You should ask for a car. Kids your age always want cars.”

“I don’t want a car. I don’t even have a driver’s license. Look-” Peter pushed up from his seat, putting distance between him and Stark. “Can we just pretend tonight didn’t happen?”

“No, we can’t,” Stark retorted, pushing away as well. They stared one another down. Then Stark shook his head. “Look… you saved my life, Parker. When I put on that armor, I don’t- I don’t ever expect backup, and you-” Stark’s face lit up, like he had an epiphany. “How would you like backup instead?”

Peter didn’t know how to process that. “What, Iron Man is gonna show up and help me protect the purses and clutch bags of Manhattan?”

“Please,” Stark said darkly. “If you stuck to mere street crime, you wouldn’t have been in my penthouse today.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Nope, you go where you think you’re needed, and that’s why you’re dangerous.”

“I haven’t hurt anyone-” Peter started to say heatedly.

“Except yourself,” Stark hissed. “Stab  _ resistant _ , Parker?” Peter winced. Stark looked pissed. He scratched his bandaged face irritably, then pointed at Peter. “You know, half the reason why I support anti-vigilante laws is because you guys end up dead on the streets. A lot. It’s a goddamn waste of your potential.”

“And what’s the other half?”

“Undertraining, lack of respect for structure, and a complete void of accountability,” Stark said loftily. Peter scoffed. “Handwave it all you want, laws are laws for a reason.”

“Well, sometimes doing what’s right means breaking the law,” Peter muttered.

Stark’s mouth twisted. “Heh. You sound like Captain America. That attitude got him in trouble too.”

“Like he wouldn’t be the first one to throw me in jail.”

“You’d be surprised,” Stark retorted. Then he sighed, all of the anger draining out of him. “There’s a reason why we don’t recruit Pro Heroes out of childhood like other nations, and you’re the poster child of it.” He rounded the table. Peter backed up, but Stark ignored him, heading for a sink. He washed his hands, his back to Peter. “You’ve been on the streets for a while, since you were, hm… fifteen? Sixteen? You’ve stuck with it longer than most people stick with their jobs nowadays, and completely without pay.” Stark turned off the water, roughly drying his hands. “You’re tired. Impatient. Dissatisfied with the system, even though you’ve barely dipped your toes into Hero work.” He turned around, leaning against the sink. He crossed his arms over his chest. “But despite all that… your history’s not bad. Plenty of people are grateful. Chatter about you on the internet remains positive. The sales associated with your merch rivals Rhodey’s, which is unfortunate, considering you can’t get any royalties.” Stark shrugged. “And… you’re not dead yet.” 

“Don’t count me out just yet. A new week starts in a handful of hours.”

Stark ignored him. “And, angry or not, resentful or not, disrespectful or not… you’ve done what no other vigilante to my knowledge has ever done—you’ve actively put yourself on the path out of vigilantism.” He laughed hoarsely. “I can’t figure out if that’s sad or wonderful.”

“What does that mean?” Peter asked, unnerved. He felt like he already knew, though.

Stark was hardly the exit plan Peter had depended on. And what he said next proved it.

“It means you have a future, and it means I want to see you get there.” Stark held up one finger, smirking again. “Think about it. In return for your silence about Iron Man, I will give you one, no questions asked, get-out-of-jail free card. One escape route for when you inevitably screw things up.”

It was tempting. “What if the circumstance  _ is  _ jail?” 

“No questions asked. That’s how much I trust you,” Stark said. “And if you continue on this path, continue to protect people, continue to pull people out of harm’s way, I will show you why Pro Hero Society isn’t worth giving up on just yet.” Stark sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. After a couple of beats of that, he dragged his eyes back down to Peter. “But part of that involves you sticking with school.”

Peter tensed. He thought Stark had a weak magnetism Quirk. Was he actually a mind reader instead? “How did you-”

“You were flagged as a potential drop out early last year,” Stark interrupted. “It’s caused your teachers a lot of angst. They think you’re having problems at home.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I’m not really part of the faculty but consider this as a warning that other professors can and will.” 

“You’re lying,” Peter retorted. He’d been drowning in gloom, feeling trapped between a rigged society and a calling. Between a rock and a hard place. His teachers had seen all that, and had done… what exactly? Besides wring their hands and talk about Peter behind his back?

“Victor Von Doom said you’re one of the most promising of your generation,” Stark offered, dangling that in front of him like a carrot on a stick.

That revelation knocked Peter straight out of his simmering temper. He was almost pleased by that. Then abruptly outraged. “He gave me a  _ C _ .” 

Stark was tickled pink by that. When he finally stopped laughing, he wiped tears from his eyes. “Don’t dropout, kid,” he said, still deeply amused. “One day, you’re gonna want to have the support of an actual Hero community. You’re gonna want to drop the vigilante schtick. And when you do, it will be so much easier to ask for help if you have a legit license.” He shot Peter a sarcastic little salute. “Just trust me in this.” 

“From one chronic liar to another,” Peter quipped. Stark agreed, laughing again. But Peter wasn’t done. “Tell me. If Pro Hero Society is easier to play ball with if you’re official, then why are you hiding the fact that you’re also Iron Man?”

Stark’s smile didn’t quite fade, but it turned bittersweet. “I plead the fifth,” he said. “It’s a boring, made for tv explanation that has to do with Quirk prejudices, my well documented daddy issues, and nasty, nasty capitalism.” 

“I don’t understand,” Peter said slowly, squinting.

Stark rolled his eyes. “I’m the heir to a carefully crafted empire, and Pro Hero drafts were legal up until the late eighties. Fill in the gaps, and maybe you too will understand why it’s sometimes better to play second fiddle in this world of ours.” Rubbing his hand through his hair, he pushed away from the counter. “Besides, what do you have to complain about? You think things are rough under Pierce? You would have died under Osborn. At least Pierce pretends to be nice. Osborn ruled New York with an iron fist, and he had a nasty habit of treating people with weaker Quirks like disposable trash.”

Peter thought about Uncle Ben, who died to protect people. About Harry, who twisted himself beyond recommendation to get a shred of Norman Osborn’s attention. 

“Yeah, I know,” he whispered.

-

Ned watched Peter shove his books in his bag. Peter was rushing and under a time crunch. He’d slept through his alarm and missed his first class. Thank god for Ned. His friend had swung by to make sure he didn’t miss another one. He’d knocked on Peter’s door, waking him. He had fetched the right books while Peter stomped around like a zombie, looking for clean clothes. He’d waited patiently while Peter took the fastest shower known to man. Now, he was sitting on Peter’s bed, watching Peter carefully, rolling a piece of licorice in his mouth.

“You okay, Pete?” he asked, frowning. 

Peter unburied his laptop from his blanket and shoved it at his bag. “Sure. Why do you ask?”

“You didn’t wash off your shampoo.”

“... _ Shit _ .” 

Peter and Ned were late, but life went on ticking, unchanged by missing classes nor startling revelations. That didn’t change everything from being… weird, though. Uncanny. Just a bit off. 

The day Peter was finally unmasked was wonderfully horrible, strange, and confusing at the same time. It was like the world had tilted on its axis and had become tricolored overnight. It was like sweets tasted like sours and sours tasted savory. It was like the laws of physics had to be reminded to operate once more, but everything was well.

Because Tony Stark knew who Spider-Man is, and Peter wasn’t behind bars.

Just about everyone in the world knew the story of the genius, billionaire, philanthropist that was Tony Stark. He hadn’t entered Hero Society until his late forties when an alien race called the Chitari invaded New York City, but his role in the invasion was largely obscured by the entrance of a flying man in red and gold armor. 

Iron Man took to the sky that day, joining a bunch of other individuals who would later be called the Avengers. Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye would collectively beat back the invaders, saving the day.

The story didn’t end so simply, though. Or on such a relieving note.

Stark had been right. Osborn had been nothing less of a dictator back then. The then-head of the Central Hero Agency had seen the actions of the Avengers as tantamount to treason. Osborn immediately called for all members of the Avengers to be arrested and charged, especially after they let Thor take Loki back to Asgard.

Stark eased into the limelight then, funding an army of lawyers to beat back the charges. After a few years of fighting, an agreement was made to drop all claims if the Avengers agreed to be accountable to the people. By that, they decided that meant that all members of the Avengers needed to reveal their identities and that all members had to agree to form an official Hero agency under the Central Hero Agency itself. 

This was easier said than done. The first round of agreements failed to recognize the Hulk as a sentient person. The second one tried—and failed—to argue for Thor to be recognized as a willing accessory to the invasion. The third agreement fit just right, and on a fall morning, the newly formed Avengers held a press conference to introduce themselves to the world. An unfrozen soldier reintroduced himself to a world who assumed he was long dead. An ancient Norse god revealed some fairy tales are real. Two spies adjusted to the reality of being known. A scientist grimaced but stood still as the man behind the Hulk was finally—and publicly—revealed. 

And Iron Man took his helmet off to reveal an extremely strained James Rhodes Jr.

There was quite a bit of excitement about Rhodes. He was a decorated Army veteran. Blessed with a flight Quirk, Rhodes had been drafted into Hero work while he was in college. A talented pilot, he was pulled into the military and quickly started getting noticed globally. Fluent in several languages and naturally calm in even the most dire of circumstances, he was often a top choice for international coalitions against any coordinated villain activity attacking multiple countries.

But being the cream of the crop eventually led to Rhodes’ discharge. A nasty entanglement with an enemy in a foreign nation left Rhodes allegedly unable to use his Quirk—or even walk, for that matter.

The revelation of Iron Man convinced the public that Rhodes had miraculously recovered his Quirk, no matter how many times Rhodes pointed at the repulsors and rockets that made the Iron Man suit fly. People had seen rocket jet packs before. No one could comprehend a suit with that much dexterity, agility, and mobility. It also didn’t help that most people, very much attached to their Quirks, sincerely did not want to imagine a weapon that could steal it away from them. 

In any case, Rhodes eventually let it go and let people claim what they wanted to claim, and people loved him even more for it. The fact that Rhodes came into the Avengers with none other than Tony Stark as his sidekick was a huge bonus. Peter had been young then, but he remembered watching news pundits discuss how strategic it had been for Rhodes to scoop up such a deep wallet. He hadn’t thought anything of it.

But that was then and this was now. He was old enough to know that Quirks didn’t come back when they were stolen. He was also savvy enough to know that, of the two of them, Rhodes wouldn’t have been the one to immediately suit up. That level of recklessness had to have been Stark. So it was very possible that Rhodes hadn’t scooped up and dragged Stark along. Instead, it had to be vice versa.

And why?

Because even ten years ago, even after a harrowing invasion event, it was still less scandalous to expose a potentially Quirkless man as a possible vigilante than it was to expose the Hero Support who was actually under that suit. Saving the day wasn’t a sidekick’s place, after all, and if MJ’s experience had proven anything, it was that people were willing to resort to violence to maintain the status quo. 

No wonder Stark wanted him to stay in school. 

After his class, Agency Budgeting and Accounting, ended, he and Ned parted ways for the day. Distracted, Peter lingered a little too long and found himself rushing yet again. There was a public debate on campus about the ethics of Quirk enhancement, and he was supposed to attend, listen to the arguments, and write an essay on it for Dr. McCoy’s History and Evolution of Quirks class. But by the time he made it to the auditorium, the seats were filled. 

Peter might have panicked a little. The essay was worth a fifth of his grade.

But it seemed like someone had anticipated this. A gum snapping student employee took pity on him and wrote down the URL of the stream of the same talk for him. Peter hauled ass back to his dorm and plugged in his laptop, firing up the stream. He landed on his bed next to his computer just as the page fully loaded. He estimated he’d only missed about ten minutes of it—who gave their best arguments ten minutes in, right? 

As soon as the video stopped buffering, a clear shot of a stage came into view. Peter immediately balked at the sight of the two men on stage. One of the presenters was none other than Carlton Drake himself. 

Drake was going on and on about the Life Foundation—Peter was right in that he’d missed nothing. The camera panned from him several times to the other man on the stage. A helpful caption identified the blank faced, long haired man as an anti-Quirk enhancement advocate, but that was so reductive. Most people, Peter figured, knew the guy as the Winter Soldier instead.

No wonder the auditorium was full. 

After Drake finished his spiel, Bucky Barnes introduced himself to the crowd, pale blue eyes sweeping over the audience. He had a soft spoken, almost Brooklyn accent to him, a miracle after all of these years. He was a miracle too, now that Peter thought about it.

Barnes had been brainwashed into being a weapon until just a few years ago. One of the world’s longest standing villain alliances, HYDRA, had captured him sometime during World War II and had brutally remodeled Barnes from an Army soldier into a global assassin. Now freed, Barnes inhabited a strange and nebulous place in Pro Hero Society. As an asset that the Central Hero Agency wanted to keep, Barnes was free to do whatever he wanted.

And “whatever he wanted” entailed following Captain America around, which the Agency didn’t much care for. But they didn’t challenge it. Barnes was not officially an Avenger, but he aligned tightly enough that he might as well be. But he had a certain sophistication to him that the often chaotic team failed to display in public. 

A certain maturity. A certain decisiveness. No matter where he was, even now, he was steady and planted in place like a tree in the middle of a parade. Or a sniper waiting for a shot.

But in the context of ESU’s auditorium, he was an odd contrast with Drake. Drake was the eager academic, spouting study after study to make his point. He had a flare for showmanship that steady and still Barnes couldn’t beat. Drake even took over the display behind him to show case after case of improved lives because of Quirk enhancement. The testimonies, straight from their mouths, were especially moving, even given what Peter knew of the Life Foundation.

After the fifth of such cases, Peter belatedly remembered his essay. He started taking notes. Thinking about Otto, Peter grudgingly started drafting out a tentative outline detailing the benefits of Quirk enhancement. Drake was sketchy, but he was thorough, and thoroughness won points in the eyes of Dr. McCoy. Peter’s very large and very blue professor was a notoriously hard grader.

“-with this, even you can see Quirk enhancement is an unequivocal good,” Drake finished, beaming. His smile widened as a chorus of applause met this announcement. He clicked a button, and a display showed a collage of pictures of all the cases he had cited. Drake’s showmanship was really off the charts. Peter felt like he was watching a tech conference rather than a debate hosted in one of the smallest Pro Hero colleges in America.

But the dazzle only went so far. As Peter looked at those smiling and slightly pixelated faces, he couldn’t help but think about Wade’s experience with a botched Quirk enhancement. While it didn’t excuse the murder spree that followed, Wade had been deeply tormented by the experience. 

Wade was so settled nowadays, Peter couldn’t even imagine what he must have been like back then. The man who would shrug and say the world ‘is what it is’ was the same one who blew the head off of his torturer with a smile and drove around town with the man’s corpse in the front seat. Quirk enhancement had deeply cracked something in him, Peter was sure. While Wade was more stable now, there was still that fissure inside of him. 

And nothing that caused that fissure could ever be described as “an unequivocal good”.

That same fissure was in Barnes, it seemed. Now allotted time for his own arguments, Barnes spoke plainly. He didn’t show pictures, nor did he share many stats. Instead, he presented a high degree of skepticism about the role of companies in such a process, skipping over possible benefits entirely. He laid out the economics. He cracked open the politics. Most bleakly, however, he grimly characterized Quirk enhancement as a new arms race, but instead of pitting country against country, it was going to pit the rich against the poor. 

“Who the hell else is going to afford it?” Barnes said plainly. “The rich get richer, even in this. I’ve seen it up close and personal.”

The moderator wasn’t expecting class warfare to enter the debate and was too busy shuffling her notes to call out Drake when he interrupted Barnes. “I understand your experience with HYDRA was… unpleasant, but you can’t let your biased personal experiences get in the way of advancement-” Drake was saying quickly, trying to reverse the narrative.

“Pretty sure my biased personal experience is one of those decades-long case studies you scientists get hot and bothered over,” Barnes retorted, side-eyeing the other man. 

It was strangely satisfying to see the always smooth Drake sputter and stumble. Any points his showmanship had won him had been squandered by Barnes’ blunt confrontation of the unsaid truth of society—some people are more equal than others.

Peter scribbled more notes furiously as the two men continued to fire comments at each other back and forth, ignoring the moderator’s carefully scheduled structure. Exasperated, she let them have at it, asking only for clarification or evidence when the disagreements got too heated.

“Final thoughts?” she pressed towards the end of their scheduled debate.

Drake jumped in first. “Quirk enhancement is not new, as Sergeant Barnes can attest. While certain actors have given Quirk enhancement a bad name, this could also be said of nuclear power. It doesn’t mean it isn’t still useful, and it doesn’t mean that it cannot be used for the greater good of the world.” He tugged on the cuffs of his shirt. “Widespread Quirk enhancement is inevitable. Dissenters like Sergeant Barnes can either ride the wave of progress with everyone else or get left behind at the station.”

Peter blinked. What a bitter way to end his pitch. He didn’t think that would be Drake’s final thought, given his initial push for Quirk enhancement to be seen as innocent as a routine medical procedure. The camera lingered on his face for a while longer. Drake was smiling still, but it was razor sharp. Barnes had got under his skin. 

If McCoy asked who had lost the debate, wouldn’t the answer be Drake? He’d basically abandoned his position by the end, whereas Barnes had stayed steady. That’s what he got for arguing in absolutes, Peter supposed. He hadn’t posed a single counter argument regarding the Life Foundation’s most likely clients either.

The camera shifted over to Barnes. The man tapped on the microphone gently with two metal fingers. He paused thoughtfully for a second. Then he said, with damning solemnity, “The day we normalize Quirks as currency is the day that the average citizen will be silenced forever.”

Drake whipped around, exasperated, “Now, wait a minute-”

Whatever he said was lost in the sound of wrap-up music playing. Captions thanked Peter for watching over the backdrop of Drake arguing with the moderator. Barnes, for his part, blithely walked off stage, unbothered by the outcome of that debate. And why would he be? He was merely speaking truth to what he’d seen under HYDRA’s thumb. 

Drake, on the other hand, looked furious. If there was any merit in what Eddie Brock said about Drake and his fixation on ESU, this couldn’t have been a good day for the Life Foundation’s stocks. Barnes wasn’t an Avenger, but he might as well have been. And as one of the two oldest subjects of Quirk enhancement still living, Barnes’ rejection of the Life Foundation’s pitch was about as close as they were going to get to the Avengers’ giving Drake the middle finger.

MJ was going to be thrilled.

Shaking his head, Peter focused back on his assignment. He crossed his pro-Quirk enhancement thesis out and started to draft out his own feelings regarding the role of class and economics in Pro Hero Society. He didn’t think the situation was quite as bleak as Barnes had stated, but he had his own long held thoughts about the assessment process—or the reassessment process. The expense of it, long-term dividends if you fell on the right side of it. How people with money were the only ones who got a second (or third or fourth) shot at ensuring their kids could be superheroes. 

Now that Peter thought about it, he was positive he never even had a proper assessment growing up. They’d been pre-selected for tracks based off of some bullshit personality assessment. He remembered feeling confused that day when his results came out, so sure he’d missed the actual test itself. For a child who prided himself on his test scores, the idea that he screwed up so badly that he’d failed himself into the sidekick status had been devastating. 

He funneled all of that remembered anger into the outline before he put a pause on it, considering his grade. Half of writing a successful college essay was writing to please your audience. In this case, his essay had to appeal to whatever the teacher would want to hear. 

Dr. McCoy seemed like he was pro-Life Foundation. Why else would he send them to that debate? Peter was also fairly sure McCoy had literally written the book on modern Quirk enhancement. Hell, the work of the Life Foundation was probably based on the man’s own research. Should Peter change his thesis then? Frustrated, Peter tossed his pen down and tried to think. 

-

Peter had just unraveled half of his sock’s hem when his phone buzzed. It was Wade.  _ Working hard or hardly working? _

Still deep in essay hell, Peter considered snapping a picture of his notes. Then he thought better of it, pushing it out of the way. Instead, he took a picture of his dorm bed and his laptop, open and adorned with the loveliest blank Word doc.  _ Working hard on an essay that will piss off my teacher _ , he typed, pairing the message with a tongue out emoji.  _ Remember me as I was, not who I will become. _

Peter felt too strongly about this. His thesis would stay. Anyway, this wouldn’t be the last of the essays he’d have to write for McCoy’s class. He’d grovel later in the semester to save his grade. He was pretty sure the man gave extra credit sometimes. 

Distracted by the task in front of him, Peter barely processed the gif Wade sent him back—an animated cat with big, luminous eyes. It was followed up by three pizza slice emojis, a heart, and a kissy face.

Peter didn’t think what it meant until someone was knocking on his third-floor window. He froze for a long, terrified moment before a jolly voice called out, “Yoohoo? Anyone home? Food delivery here for one very special, very hardworking boy.”

Peter’s face flamed. Wade was lucky he came bearing gifts or otherwise Peter might have left him hanging. Literally, as it turned out. Annoyed, Peter pushed back his blinds and opened his window to see Wade wiggling his fingers in greeting. The man was outside his window, a sword shoved about a foot into the concrete and his feet braced against the wall. Wade took Peter’s chiding cheerfully, hand waving the property damage as a longstanding tab he had open with the X-Men. 

He bounced giddily on Peter’s hard cot of a bed before unpacking the plastic bags he’d brought in with him. He laid the large cardboard box on Peter’s pillow gently as if it was a holy object. Peter completely understood the reverence; it smelled heavenly. As Wade hummed and praised the creation of pizza and “all things cheesy”, Peter took a rare look around his room—and promptly panicked.

It was an utter mess. While Wade’s back was turned, Peter tried to stealthily hide what he could, but a few seconds of cleaning couldn’t undo months of absentmindedness. The jig was truly up. Wade now knew that Peter was the kind of guy who let dirty laundry accumulate into a second layer of carpeting. The kind of guy who drank freezer pops while they were still in liquid form. The kind of guy who idly grew penicillin in his bathroom because he forgot a PB&J in there by the toilet.

Forget his dorm, it was Peter who was the damn mess.

But Wade didn’t comment on any of it. Not a single bit. Instead, he coaxed Peter to join him. Together, they sat on Peter’s bed, tearing their way through this shared meal. It was a weirdly nice break from schoolwork. 

And it was a reminder that it had been almost a whole week since they talked last. Inundated with schoolwork, Peter hadn’t even registered that he’d missed Wade until Wade was sitting down next to him. He pressed his face into Wade’s shoulder, sighing. Then he sighed louder when Wade just chuckled. Despite the embarrassment, Peter was genuinely glad to see him. He just wished it wasn’t here, that it wasn’t so unannounced. Mold aside, his dorm was a small space. It didn’t seem as small to Peter alone, but, then again, he spent half of his time on the ceiling anyway.

But Wade was bigger than him. It felt like he was filling up the space with his broad shoulders alone, and there was nowhere Peter could run from him. Peter didn’t know why he wanted to, only that the impulse was there, crawling up his spine with anxious, guilty energy. 

Was it the essay? Was it the proximity of Wade’s arrival to Peter’s contemplation of things he really should not have known? Was it the reminder of Peter's lies of omission in juxtaposition with an unexpectedly sweet gesture from Wade?

For better or worse, Wade didn’t stick around long enough for Peter to find out. Nope, he merely stayed long enough to eat his half of the food before seeing himself out, but not before wishing Peter luck with his essay. 

That Peter felt relief at all at his exit made a pit form in his stomach. Peter wanted to see him. He had talked himself into Wade’s lap, even—to Wade’s delight. He was happy for the interruption, he was ecstatic for the food, he was just…

Buzzing. Twitching. Paranoid. 

Why?

Shaking his head, Peter got back to business. He got part of the way through the first paragraph of his grade dooming paper before his fingers completely stilled. He fished out his phone and looked at the text thread between him and Wade. His stomach dropped as his mind finally did the math problem his lizard brain had solved the second someone rapped on his window. 

Saying he was in his dorm working on his homework was an easy lie he’d used many, many times on his friends and loved ones. What would Wade have thought if he popped his head in to say hi and Peter wasn’t there? Wade had caught him telling the truth this time. But what would it mean if Wade had caught him in a lie next time? 

Stark knowing Peter’s identity was bad enough. With Wade, Peter was walking a thin line, and he had just as much—if not even more—to lose. 


	9. Chapter 9

Now that Stark had planted the idea in his head, Peter was definitely noticing the “intervention” by his school faculty. He was ashamed to realize that he probably wouldn’t have caught on to it himself, so trapped was he in his ever-lingering feelings of resentment.

Doom’s previous chat with him was obviously an early attempt. Even his interaction with Stark could count as one. No one after him was quite as blunt, though. But there certainly were more attempts.

About twelve hours after the worst day of Peter’s life, Wanda tracked him down to ask, stiltedly, if he would mind taking new photos for the ESU campus website.

“It’s paid by the hour,” she said brusquely. Well, with that kind of reward, Peter was hardly going to say no. What he didn’t expect was Wanda following him around during the shoot, small talk peppered between awkward personal questions. He couldn’t tell who left the shoot faster, him or the newspaper’s former advisor. Hours after, Peter wondered if she had gained anything—anything at all.

Beck held him after class about a week later, trapping him in a smug, forty-five minute long conversation about dreams and goals. Every time Peter thought the chat was going somewhere, Beck launched into a story about one of the (many) times he’d pulled through a situation against all odds. After four years of enduring Beck’s mythologizing about himself, the whole experience was very, very annoying.

“You’re a good listener, Parker. Say, want to workshop branding deals?” Beck said out of nowhere, eyes gleaming.

He was really, truly the worst.

Two days later, Melissa Gold, the professor for both his costuming and Adaptive Hero Gear classes, stopped him in the hallway. Virtually unlimited access to ESU’s costuming workshop/gear forge came in the form of a small brass key he could have sworn only people in Hero Track earned.

Gold plopped it in his hand. “You’re a senior now,” was all she said in her quiet, hoarse voice. Peter thanked her effusively, pleased that he no longer had to break in afterhours to upgrade his Spider-Man suit. His legitimate suit was, by Gold’s own grading rubric, uninspired, but she herself had been stumped on how one augmented sticky hands and a danger sense. Peter was hardly going to be inspired by unfettered access to the workshop and forge, nor was he going to be somehow extra motivated to stick around.

She was going to be disappointed. That was too bad. She was a rather nice teacher.

But of all the faculty that approached Peter after Stark let the cat out of the bag, Dr. Hank McCoy was probably the most subtle. On the surface, it looked like he pulled Peter into his office for a friendly chat about his essay on Quirk enhancement, and that was all it was. Initially. The conversation was lively and interesting—and Peter’s grade, as it turned out, wasn’t as in jeopardy as he thought.

McCoy wasn’t nearly as pro-Quirk enhancement as he suspected.

“I bit off more than I could chew when I was your age,” McCoy confided, pouring Peter a cup of tea. “I was, um…  _ uniquely _ invested in coming up with a way to help people with physical Quirks like my own.” He sat down in his chair, the leather squeaking. “I wanted to give people like me a way out. While our so-called Mutant Quirks are often seen—erroneously—as the superior category of enhancement, the truth is that society is built for a certain, how shall we say,  _ expression _ of humanity. One that is mobile. One that has… a certain number of limbs? One that is within a range of appropriate sizes. One that belongs to a certain specific state of matter, even-”

As McCoy continued to tick off additional limiters on his claws, Peter thought of the Rhino. Of Otto. Of Betty. Of a tiny, fifteen-inch classmate he’d had in middle school. Of a six-armed neighbor who could never get on the subway. Of a little puddle of a girl Spider-Man saved who almost evaporated in the heat of a sudden kitchen fire.

“I guess it didn’t go well?”

“An understatement,” McCoy said, baring his fangs in a smile. “It was an utter failure! I’m afraid the whole experience ran rather contrary to my aims…” Though that was somewhat of a melancholy announcement, he dismissed it with a wave of his massive blue hand. “Such is science, you know this. A good intention, no matter how well meant, will not shape or change data, no matter how much we wish otherwise.”

That was the beauty of science, Peter thought. And the curse too, he supposed.

McCoy looked at his tea for a long moment, seeming to admire the amber color. When he spoke again, his voice was very soft. “My intervention, as it were, actually  _ enhanced _ the expression of Mutant Quirks. It made things… much, much worse for many of us.”

When it didn’t seem like McCoy was going to follow that up with anything, Peter asked, “How so?”

McCoy looked up over his glasses. Then he smiled politely. “Well, young man. Let’s just say I didn’t used to have fur, and leave it at that.” He shifted towards his desk, tapping a claw on a paper—Peter’s paper, already graded. “Anyway, I agree with much of what you said here, and I thank you for it as well as your critical thinking. Many of your classmates do not approach this with as much… nuance.”

That was accompanied by a low, grumble. He picked up the essay and handed it to Peter. Peter had gotten almost full marks. He’d had a few formatting and typo issues, and McCoy had docked him correspondingly for each. He felt a little embarrassed, losing such easy points. He could have kept them, had he given the paper a final read through. Or, better yet, asked to borrow MJ and her editor’s eye.

McCoy watched him skim through his paper. “While I admire Mr. Drake’s commitment to improving the quality of life for all of humanity, it is  _ society _ that needs to change to accommodate its people, not the other way around.”

Those were Peter’s thoughts too. His paper crinkled between his hands.

“We are so privileged to live in this day and age,” McCoy continued. “With this technology. With this level of science. Healthcare. Education. If society is to change for the better, it needs to start with us. Humanity, more specifically. For what is society, but people? We should do a better job taking care of each other. We should all be a little kinder. A little more understanding. Don’t you agree?”

Peter didn’t know what to say. He didn’t add the word friendly to his vigilante name for nothing. But what McCoy was saying didn’t sit well with him at all. They might agree that society was rigged, but there was a whole world’s worth of difference in their thoughts about who was responsible for taking down that rigging.

Worth was tied so strongly to power these days. Peter swallowing his bitterness a little better wasn’t going to change that. Ever.

“Altruism goes only so far, sir,” Peter said stiffly. “I could be the kindest man in the world to everyone I meet, and someone will still be brutally murdered today in cold blood.” You could set your watch by it.

McCoy grimaced at that. “Morbid imagery, Mr. Parker, but… yes, quite true.” He sighed gustily, looking out his window for a moment.

Peter twitched in his seat. This conversation was no longer as enjoyable. Instead, it was rather pointed. It was obvious now that McCoy brought him in not to chat about his paper, but rather to feel him out. To get involved, just as Wanda and Gold and Beck tried to.

Peter tried to cut McCoy some slack, given the kindness behind this not-so-secret intervention, the genuine desire to keep Peter from making mistakes. But the vein in his head was throbbing too harshly, so he focused on the grain in McCoy’s desk instead. He traced it with the tip of his finger, feeling along the minute edges.

A lifetime of manners education at Aunt May’s knee kept him from abruptly leaving. “ _ You get what you put into the world _ ,” May told him once while flipping off a rude neighbor.

She would like McCoy. She would want him to be polite. So he stayed.

Still looking out the window, McCoy asked, “Are you familiar with the parable about the starfish?”

Still tracing, Peter reluctantly agreed. No one could escape that story at ESU any more than they could escape Captain America’s biography or bitter debates about which of the industry’s Big Three—Stark Industries, Advanced Idea Mechanics, or the Rand Corporation—provided better bang for the buck for Pro Hero gear.

McCoy’s eyes jumped back to him. “What does it mean to you?”

“Saving the world. One person at a time.”

McCoy chuckled. “No, my boy,” he said kindly. “One boy on one beach, throwing starfish back into the ocean? He will  _ never _ save the world.” He laughed again, and the sound, for all that it was friendly and warm, grated, falling on Peter like a blow. A personal one. “He cannot even save the ocean! His efforts are far too small.  _ Too limited. _ Throwing the starfish back into the ocean is useless, no matter how many times he repeats it on his own.”

Heat fell over Peter’s face. “It had meaning to the  _ starfish _ ,” he countered, blood rushing in his ears. Just as Spider-Man’s interventions mattered to the people he saved. To the families they loved. To the communities they belonged to. Just because Peter would never be the guy saving the world didn’t mean his actions were  _ worthless _ .

“Perhaps,” McCoy said. “One could certainly debate if that—or anything—truly matters to a starfish in a cognitive sense, given that starfish have neither brain nor blood… but I digress from my point entirely!” He coughed into a closed fist, the noise sounding a little embarrassed. “But I see your interpretation, so please indulge my interpretation of the story for one moment, Mr. Parker, for I do believe that the point of that story isn’t that the boy is there on the beach. Rather, the point was that he wasn’t there  _ alone _ .”

Despite his hurt, curiosity prickled at him. He indulged it cautiously. “…I don’t understand.”

McCoy was already nodding. “Yes, a phrase I wish many of your classmates would become more acquainted with! But back to my point: the solitary action of one person changes nothing. But he was joined by another,  _ questioned _ by another. And by that questioning, the outsider was made to  _ think _ , to  _ challenge  _ himself, to consider the possibility of another way. Just as we were when we heard the story for the very first time!”

Peter struggled to make sense of this. McCoy was beaming, like some profound point had been made, and Peter just had to catch up.

He made a stab at it. “So, the point of the story isn’t about the starfish or even the boy. It’s about the question.”

“Precisely! It is a question— _ the _ question, if you will. A paralysis that we battle with everyday.” McCoy’s smile turned melancholy. He gestured at their surroundings. “What is the point of this? Why do we act? Why should I bother to be good, to do good, when so many others behave poorly?” He paused, then lifted a finger. “One boy. One solitary set of actions. This is the answer. It is the boy who shows us why we should act. Who shows us the  _ example  _ of what it is meant to live life as a good person. Who becomes the ideal, the role model, the multiplier of good. So much so that you can rarely find a Pro Hero in training who does not know of his example.” 

Peter’s ears were ringing. His hands were fisted over his knees. He was silent, but he hung on McCoy’s every word.

“You see,” McCoy continued, “that boy alone on the beach will not save a world. Nor even a single ocean. But being an example, being a person with a gentle heart, being someone who moves others past the paralysis that plagues us all…  _ that  _ is what will save the world. Not the lonely, isolated actions of a boy, nor the jaded resentment of his fellow man.” McCoy settled back into his chair with a satisfied smile. “ _ That example _ … is what Pro Heroes become when they are at their very best. They are those multipliers. Those ideals. Those role models. No matter the context, they stand firm in their convictions and principles. No matter the circumstance. No matter how skewed the scales are tipped in someone else’s favor-”

“Yeah, well, some of those scales hurt people, sir,” Peter interrupted, the bitterness bursting out of him.

Immediately, he wished he hadn’t said anything at all. His head was pounding, his eyes were hot, and his chest was unbelievably tight—and he couldn’t hide any of it.

Because what McCoy was describing was the exact kind of Pro Hero that Peter wanted to be. Not a liar. Not a criminal. Not a vigilante people didn’t trust. Just a guy a little more like Uncle Ben.

And it hurt badly because sometimes he hated the world so much, it took his breath away. He hated it so much, he often thought it was better that it hated him right back.

But Ben Parker hadn’t hated the world. It confused him. It delighted him. He was the nicest man Peter had ever met. Had he lived, he would have forgiven anyone for anything—even Norman Osborn. Even Carlton Drake. Even Wade Wilson. Even a world obsessed with devaluing the weak, the poor, and the powerless. He’d merely push his sleeves up and get to work fixing it.

How disappointed would he be to know that Peter, his unwanted and unplanned for child, couldn’t do the same?

McCoy paused for a moment, letting Peter catch his breath. Then, quietly, he said, “To paraphrase a much-debated quote… holding onto resentment is like consuming poison, and then waiting for the other person to die.” Peter looked up slowly. When they made eye contact, McCoy smiled sadly. “You have a very gentle heart, Mr. Parker. I hope you treat it kindly.”

-

Three days later, their newspaper was back in full swing. It had been a rough couple of days, but, finally, things seemed to be on the up-and-up. All of the broken equipment was replaced. The window was fixed. Lingering debris was cleared away. The room was repainted. Security in the office was improved. Even long debated upgrades to software were made with zero fuss. They even had a brand new industrial sized printer with scanning/faxing functionality—and no matter how much Wade wheedled over text, Peter was  _ not _ going to use it to fax him a picture of his ass. But the idea he could in the future?

Funny as hell.

Anyway, the space wasn’t just good as new—it was better than it ever had been before. A place of value and investment. A serious space for college-level journalism. A radical rejection of the violence and vandalism that sought to silence it for good.

It was a transformation worth celebrating… If only the person behind it didn’t insist that he himself was the one they were applauding. They could have done without that.

But the truth of the matter was that this speedy turnaround was the brainchild of their new faculty advisor, Quentin Beck—and he’d hosted an unannounced “grand reopening” in their office to prove it. MJ’s reporters, writers, and other assorted staff were excited to be greeted with a party instead of their scheduled meeting; MJ, less so.

As MJ tried to be gracious about it, Peter slipped by her and Beck into the office itself. He sidestepped his fellow peers who were making a beeline for the snacks and drinks set up for the event, going straight to his new computer station. Beck’s boasted upgrades were real. His old computer took at least seven minutes to warm up. This new one took less than thirty seconds. He idly clicked on new program icons, double checked the internet connection, and tried not to get too excited about anything out of solidarity with MJ, and out of general dislike for Beck.

In front of him, MJ was trying to corral the team back into their meeting. Beck was less than helpful with this, telling her to relax. It went over like a lead balloon—or perhaps more like a lead elephant that no one made eye contact with. The mood of the room steadily shifted the longer it became apparent that MJ and Beck were not on the same page.

To MJ’s credit, she tried to use it as an opportunity to familiarize Beck with the way that the paper operated. To everyone else’s credit, they stayed well away from that conversation, ears pricked but comments kept to themselves.

As MJ spoke to Beck about the need to schedule and delegate stories in a timely manner, Peter remembered that there was one story she was particularly keen on printing—Eddie Brock and Carlton Drake.

Peter opened up the browser. Eddie Brock was on his mind, as usual. Just last night, he read up on a case where an ex-CEO had sued Eddie Brock over his empathy Quirk, alleging that he had been manipulated into becoming a player on his own company’s downfall.

The actual particulars of the case were less interesting than what the case had to say about Eddie himself. For example, it was well documented in court that his Quirk didn’t have an off button. Although inconvenient for the strictest readings of Quirk usage laws, this wasn’t actually unusual, especially in the wider population of untrained civilians with so-called weaker Quirks. 

For Eddie himself, the only control he had over it was focusing it on one person instead of a crowd, which he basically had to do to keep himself from going insane. His lawyer had argued that Brock’s Quirk was actually quite a hindrance on her client, comparing it to an overpowering beam of light that only Eddie could see, permanently pointed at his own eyes. To function, he could squint and see in the blinding light or he could be completely blinded. Those were his only two options.

There was certainly no third option to manipulate a CEO into destroying his own company. Brock was simply not capable of mind control.

Ultimately, it was ruled that reading the emotions of the people around him was unethical, unavoidable, and not precisely illegal. Further, there was much legal precedent protecting people in Eddie’s situation from the kind of prosecution that would follow anyone else who actively used their Quirk without a license. It was also proven that, while Brock might have convinced him to air his company’s dirty laundry, he didn’t actually force the CEO’s hand. Good old guilt, applied psychology, and some social engineering did that—and Eddie Brock didn’t seem inclined to apologize for  _ that _ .

It was an interesting read, and it gave some context to Peter’s last interaction with Eddie. Or, at least, MJ’s last interaction—unethical was a gentle way of phrasing ‘ _ needling a young woman until she broke down in tears’.  _ And yet, a mild empathy Quirk shouldn’t have triggered his spidey sense at all. It only reacted to physical dangers, not psychic or emotional ones. But his extra sense went off, and on multiple occasions too. Peter would bet his laptop that there was more to Eddie’s Quirk than was established in a courtroom.

He wasn’t looking up Eddie Brock’s Quirk today, though. He wasn’t even looking up Carlton Drake’s, which was a surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly—weak precognition Quirk. Instead, he was digging through a Quirk registry based in New York City, trying to find someone who had a Quirk that manifested as oily black skin and teeth. He found nothing. He found nothing in San Francisco’s registry either, and idle Google searches provoked only pictures of goopy movie monsters and a couple of sketchy articles raving on about shadowy blurs jumping from roofs in everywhere from California to Brussels.

He squinted at one such image, almost sure he could make out a pair of broad shoulders, but then exited out. Nothing could be learned for certain from disreputable sources. Peter knew his way around Photoshop too.

Peter sighed, sitting back in his (new!) chair, making it squeak. He rubbed a hand over his face. The name of Eddie’s eight-foot bodyguard would have to remain a mystery for now. Even if his teeth played a starring role in Peter’s nightmares—ick.

But how weird was that? At the end of the day, Peter wasn’t worried about rough around the edges Eddie Brock or even sinisterly mysterious Carlton Drake. No, he was worried—ironically—by the man whose face he didn’t know, and whose Quirk gave Peter a real run for his money.

All this, just because he wanted more insight into the guy he liked. Geez. Propping his chin on his hand, he stewed about this silently.

Meanwhile, MJ had successfully wrangled control of the impromptu party away from Beck. Her team was starting to drift back to their desks and stations.

Too late, Beck backed her up. “Alright, haul it in, guys. We’ve established who the resident party pooper is around here, and it isn’t the old guy.” He laughed. He got a couple of tight smiles. He pulled up a chair at an empty desk and made a rolling gesture at MJ, as if giving her permission to begin.

MJ largely ignored him. With the earned skill of four years of running the show, she got them back on track quickly for the day’s pitches. The content calendar started filling itself out. Peter was prepared this time with a handful of his own ideas—a research project Doom was working on, a newly proposed wing in the library, a debate amongst faculty to gradually expand the incoming freshman class. Basic stuff.

But MJ didn’t call on him this time. She’d been mildly avoiding him since he ditched her with Spider-Man. He didn’t think she was mad necessarily. She smiled at him and said hello every morning. They still had lunch together with Ned and Betty, and they still traded notes in class. He even had a recent doodle of hers—an exasperated Pietro with guacamole splatter on his face—taped to the inside of one of his spiral notebooks. But when he tried to talk to her at length, she always had a quick apology and a ready excuse to leave. 

She probably didn’t want to share what happened in that alley between her, Spider-Man, and Eddie Brock, Peter figured. Pride probably figured into it. MJ didn’t like crying, let alone crying in public. What she liked even less was egotism—and she’d truly hated thinking she could outsmart Eddie Brock’s Quirk.

MJ was clearly stalling on that inevitable conversation. But she wasn’t stalling on that conversation so much that she was ignoring him for pitches today. No, instead, she was distracted by Quentin Beck, who, despite several pointed remarks, seemed to be there to stay.

It was incredibly awkward, and it grew worse the longer the brainstorming session went on. They could have pushed past it, had Beck kept his mouth shut. Instead, he kept on inserting his comments and feedback. What was a normal lively conversation between staff slowly petered out into a one-sided mess between Beck and MJ herself.

Even the reporters and writers who were excited to have Beck on the team seemed to retreat after a while. Flash was tearing up small pieces of paper and rolling them up into balls, frowning deeply. Next to him, red-headed Theresa Cassidy silently chewed on the end of her pen. Two other reporters behind her were sinking in their chairs. Hidden in the fluff of her tail, Doreen was speedily scrolling through their rules and codes of conduct on her phone, looking for, Peter assumed, a written description of what role their faculty advisor was supposed to play in the weekly publication of their paper. It certainly wasn’t an editorial one.

But Beck was vetoing pitches left and right. Even the feel-good ones. The pitchers, usually emboldened by MJ to present counter arguments, shrank under Beck’s smiling criticism and implied dislike of their body of work. Peter, already shy about his own thoughts as “just” the photographer, kept his mouth shut. He could hardly believe how unbelievably uncompromising a man like Beck could be with such a seemingly easy going personality.

In any case, it was clear that Beck didn’t intend to advise the newspaper; he intended to reshape it.

And MJ was getting redder and redder in the face the longer this went on. If this was back in freshman year, she would have already left. But this was her last year, and she wasn’t just in charge of the newspaper—MJ  _ was _ the newspaper.

After about twenty more minutes, MJ abruptly called it quits. “This clearly isn’t getting anywhere,” she said.

“I agree. Are your meetings always so haphazard?” Beck flapped a hand. “I get it, I get it—you guys have been taking advantage of not having any adults in the room, huh? That’s what I would have done!” With that, Beck laughed.

But no one else did. No one smiled either.

MJ’s jaw tensed. She ignored him, saying, “We’ll resume this conversation tomorrow. You’re dismissed.”

People couldn’t get out fast enough. A few paused by the snack table to grab more of Beck’s offerings. Doreen ran out like her tail was on fire. Flash paused to gingerly pat MJ’s shoulder. A couple of others rushed her briefly, talking about ideas and thoughts they’d have tomorrow, as if trying to ease the blow of such an awkward meeting. No one really knew how to deal with Beck.

The room emptied quickly. Unusually, no one hung behind to talk to Beck himself, a fact that the usually popular teacher himself seemed to register with a defeated sigh. Peter slowly closed the windows he’d opened up on his computer, ducking his head low.

At a glance, it might appear that the room was completely empty, save for Beck and MJ herself. That is what Peter told himself, anyway.

Beck hauled himself out of his seat, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

“Oh?” MJ turned around from where she had been facing her desk. She leaned against it, arms crossed. “Was there a foot involved? To me, it looked like you fell flat on your face.” Ouch.

Beck chuckled, venturing out into the middle of the mostly empty room. “I came on too strong, I see that now. There’s a culture here that will be hard to break.”

MJ’s cheek flexed slightly, but she maintained an aloof expression. “Who says it needs breaking? Dr. McCoy?” She pulled out her phone. “If that’s the case, let’s bring him in here and hash this out in the open.”

Beck took an abrupt step forward, his hand out. “Whoa, whoa. No need to be that dramatic, okay? These are my thoughts. My observations, not his.” MJ eyed him, unimpressed. He relaxed a little, a sheepish expression on his face. “And I would have done better to share them with you before sharing them with, you know, the group.” He punctuated this with a wave around the empty room.

MJ paused. Then she put her phone on the top of her desk. “And what are your observations?” she asked carefully.

At this opening, Beck smiled. It wasn’t a kind one. Nothing about him today had been remotely nice. It had merely been wrapped in a thin and insincere veneer of it, and it struck Peter that today had just been a taste of what the paper was going to be from now on. He ached for MJ.

Beck and MJ continued to face off with each other. The two of them made an odd pair. Beck was a broad shouldered, six-foot man in his early forties who, despite his early retirement, had the build of a very active Pro Hero. MJ, on the other hand, was almost half his age, shorter, and slimmer—or weedier, as she liked to joke. On top of that, MJ’s body language seemed defensive, whereas Beck stood like he was a well-seasoned lawyer making his case in front of a jury.

And as for Peter, well… he was a mistake. So he stayed hidden, silent, watching. It felt like his stomach was down somewhere near the floor, and his heart was pounding like mad. He didn’t have a good feeling about this. His spidey sense wasn’t going off or anything; then again, it was notoriously bad at predicting anything other than physical threats. It was his gut that was clenching. His chest.

“The tone of a paper is set by its leadership,” Beck said, sliding his hands in his pockets. “You set a very focused, very industrious tone to a process that, to my understanding, didn’t have one before you came along.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a compliment,” MJ retorted. Her arms were crossed over her chest.

Beck flashed a rueful smile. “Just wait, because here comes the constructive criticism,” he said. He paused. Then, delicately, he continued, “I’m not sure your leadership is needed here anymore.”

There was a moment of silence.

“…Excuse me?”

Peter couldn’t read her tone. It was soft. It could have been confused. It could have been irritated. It could have been irritated. Her brow, still furrowed, didn’t give out any hints.

Beck pressed his advantage. “You’re always looking for a fight, an attitude that served you well when you were an underdog, trying to get people to listen. But now you have the attention of everyone on campus. And plenty of people outside too. Alumni. Parents. The board. Our donors. Even the janitors read your paper.”

A sharp-edged smirk made its way onto MJ’s face. “So my paper is making you look bad.”

“Sometimes? Yes.” Beck shrugged with the admittance. It was the kind of win he normally wouldn’t have allowed in class, and he gave it to her so easily that Peter’s hackles immediately shot up. His whole body clenched up with it. “And some of the directions you’ve taken recently are… a little less thoughtful than we would like to see from our students. I think this paper could do better.  _ Be  _ better.” He leaned forward slightly, smiling without warmth. “So, who is it going to be?”

MJ’s expression froze. “What do you mean?”

“Your replacement, of course,” Beck said bluntly. Peter tensed, gripping the edge of the table. “You’re going to step down as editor. You’ll get a great send off. I’ll even spring for catering! My treat.”

“The hell you are,” MJ snapped, her voice thick. “You don’t have the power to force me to step down. I haven’t broken any rules. I’ve  _ checked _ .”

Beck huffed out a small chuckle, rolling his eyes. “You’re a  _ senior _ , Michelle. You’re going to step down, one way or another. I’m giving you an easy way out. An early way out. A way to leave with your reputation intact. A chance to bow out gracefully before more people see—as I do—that your voice… your perspective… your reporting… well.” Beck shrugged carelessly. “It just isn’t relevant anymore, is it?”

Beck couldn’t have hit her any harder even if he’d used a hand to do it. Her eyes were wide, almost sightless as he exposed her deepest fear to the still air.

The corner of Peter’s desk snapped off in his hand, the sound as loud as a gunshot. MJ and Beck both flinched, turning to him. Fumbling, Peter stood and shoved the broken piece in his bag, all too aware of the livid—ice cold—stare being aimed at him from one of his least favorite teachers.

MJ took the opportunity to bounce, stalking out of the room so fast, her bag hit the door on the way out. Beck half-followed her before appearing to think better of it a few steps later. He breathed in deeply, audibly frustrated.

“Well, then,” Beck said mildly to the room, shoulders relaxing. He turned away, giving Peter a way out too.

And, scrambling, Peter almost took it. He got within inches of the door, hand outstretched for the knob. Then he hesitated, stopping. His pulse throbbed madly in his ears. Still staring at the door, he said, “None of MJ’s staff will fill her shoes as editor if they find out she was forced out of it.”

“Yes, I am well aware that they march only to the beat of Michelle’s drum,” Beck snapped, not quite as cooled off as Peter had thought. He seemed to regret the flash of temper almost instantly, rubbing a hand over his face. He turned gracefully, leaning on MJ’s desk. In a softer voice, he said, “I’m also told that, of all the people here, you’re the only one she listens to?”

Peter didn’t say a word, still facing the door.

Beck sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. “You must think I’m cruel,” he guessed accurately. “But I meet my students where they’re at, especially when it comes to feedback that they need to hear. After four years, you and I know better than anyone that Michelle won’t respond to anything other than blunt directness.”

That wasn’t entirely true. MJ responded well to respect, logic, and genuine attempts at collaboration. But it was also true that MJ had thicker skin than most. To her, the fact that people hated her meant she was doing her job right. Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t stand not being liked. He was the type to play a video game with a walkthrough open on his knee so that none of the choices he made upset the made-up feelings of the pixeled and coded characters.

“Look,” Beck said after a moment. “I don’t want her to leave the role until she’s ready to go. I truly don’t.” Peter doubted that. “But even  _ you  _ must have noticed that she put out a couple of doozies that were better handled behind closed doors!” Beck gestured around the room. “The state of this office before I arrived is the only evidence you need that she’s going down the wrong path. The kind of path that could lead to her getting hurt.”

“We’re literally in a school training us for a career that we’ll likely die in,” Peter said flatly.

“Funny you say that,” Beck countered quickly, pivoting his argument. “Because if she survives the year, that’s  _ exactly _ what’s going to happen to her.” He said it with such certainty.

Peter turned away from the door, facing him. “You don’t know that,” he said quickly, his chest tightening.

Beck smirked. “Don’t I? I’ve rubbed shoulders with the pros in more countries and nations than you can even  _ name _ , Peter,” he retorted. “Some Pro Heroes—sidekick or not—don’t die fighting villains. They die while fighting the apathy of their teammates. An apathy they  _ earn _ .”

That stung. Even for a solo act like Peter, who invited no one to join him on the streets, the idea hit a little too close to home. It hit dead center in a place inside of him that he didn’t like to acknowledge, the same place that lit up like a Christmas tree with joy when Tony Stark himself offered to give him a singular back-up.

But Beck wasn’t done. “Do you know someone in Hero Track threw a discus at her when she passed by the gym?” Although Peter didn’t answer, Beck continued on anyway. “Of course you do. So apply yourself to  _ this  _ problem, Pete. I know you can figure it out.”

He shoved off MJ’s desk and walked over to a board, uncapping a pen to draw an oval. Beck’s voice sharpened into his usual lecture voice. “The types of discus we use to train you guys ranges from 5 to 25 pounds, and they’re being thrown by some of the strongest people in the state, if not the country.” He drew a stick figure on the other end of the board, then a thin arrow pointing from the ovals to the stick figure. “If one of those things is being thrown at  _ a real life human _ instead of a specially designated target, what do you have?” Beck stabbed at the stick figure several times with a marker.

He was treating Peter like an idiot. And Peter was an idiot. He deserved this treatment. Because he should have realized this weeks and weeks ago when MJ gave him that oh so casual update.

“A dead human,” Peter whispered.

“That’s right,” Beck said, drawing an X over the stick figure. “Not an oopsie. Not a tantrum. Hero Track knows better. What you have here is  _ a murder attempt _ . And it would have succeeded if one of the people on that field that day didn’t also have a healing Quirk.”

Peter felt nauseated. Sick. Weak in the knees.

Meanwhile, Beck was examining his handiwork, his hands on his hips. After a beat, he swayed slightly to the left, rubbing the back of his neck. “…Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a murder attempt,” he said. “Maybe it was closer to attempted manslaughter. Or maybe it really was akin to a temper tantrum. I don’t know. Jury’s still out. Literally.”

There was a long pause.

Then Beck let out a big sigh before turning back around to face Peter. “I want her to continue making the good, quality content she is so well known for. I just want us to have the ability to get a hand on the wheel if we’re about to hit a wall. Or if some emotional kid with a Quirk decides to take what she says personally. You guys deserve a graduation without a moment of silence as her final memorial.”

Peter flinched at that. Beck paused, looking at Peter’s face carefully, as if trying to gauge him.

Then, quietly, he asked, “Can I count on you to help me with that, Peter?” His voice had softened by a lot since his stand off with MJ. A few years ago, Peter might have even been soothed by it—by the low empathetic pitch. By Beck’s raised eyebrows and wrinkled forehead. By the realization that someone—especially someone as experienced as Beck—would ask Peter himself for help.

But today, he just felt cold. Beck’s comment about graduation was looping over and over in his mind.

Peter just wanted to  _ run _ .

“…I have to go to class,” he muttered, feeling flustered.

“Okay,” Beck said, still in that gentle tone. “Let me know if you want to talk about it.” He turned away just as Peter grabbed for and opened the door. “So hard to read,” Beck mumbled to himself.

Not sure what to do with that or any of this, Peter hurried out. He felt conflicted. He liked to think he had MJ’s back in all things, but he didn’t necessarily disagree with Beck. Exposing the cheating in Hero Track had been dangerous. Going after Eddie Brock had been dangerous. And even Eddie Brock said going after Drake was dangerous. She was absolutely going to get herself hurt.

And yet until Peter came up with a better counterargument, she would continue to do what she wanted. What she felt was necessary. What she was sure was right.

How could he support her without coddling her? How could he keep her safe without stomping on her dreams and ideas? How much of anything could he do before she got sick of him and called their friendship quits? And how far could he go without exposing his own hypocrisy?

Peter stopped in the middle of the hallway. Just three steps outside of the office, she was waiting. Despite everything, she had stayed—stayed for  _ him _ . But her expression was saying that she was regretting it. She was leaning against the wall, hugging her bag to her chest. Her face was twisting. She’d heard everything. How could she not?

“Wipe that look off your face, Peter,” MJ warned him. Peter took a step towards her, not sure what to say. But he’d said enough for her to fill in the blanks. Her face reddened with her frustration. “I don’t want to hear it from you. I don’t want to hear it from  _ any _ of you.”

“MJ-”

She wasn’t listening anymore. “It’s none of your business.  _ Back off _ .” With that, she stormed off down the hall, leaving him behind.

Helpless, Peter watched her go. After a beat, he dragged a palm over his face, kicking himself. Then, impulsively, he looked back into the office through the open door.

From this angle, there was nothing to see but a handful of empty desks and desktop computers—at least, nothing to explain why his hackles were raised. But then, in the far off reflection of the fixed window, he could see Beck leaning up against the wall next to the door, too close to the door frame to be doing anything but eavesdropping.

Worse, in the reflection, Beck was smiling. A chill went up Peter’s spine. Beck had said he met each student where they were at, especially when it came to getting them to do what he wanted.

So divide and conquer was the theme of the day, it seemed. And Peter fell for it. Gritting his teeth, Peter walked away.

-

A week passed. It was clear that Beck was up to something, but the only person—literally the only person—in the whole school who would entertain such a notion was running away from Peter. Undeterred, he sent MJ a storm of text messages. It was a persistent campaign of apologies mixed in with half-formed thoughts about why Beck wanted the newspaper to implode. It didn’t take very long before they started sounding more like conspiracy theories rather than legit possibilities, but that was why he was the photographer, not the reporter.

MJ withstood about three days of this before she relented and started responding back to him. She called him a clingy, whining puppy before proceeding to send him YouTube videos of distraught toddlers she swore looked just like them. Peter was relieved—they would weather this fight after all. In-person encounters remained a little frosty, if not awkward, but MJ did pat his head consolingly after Pietro tripped him during one of their shared training sessions.

_ Leave the Beck sleuthing to me. _ MJ’s text came out of nowhere on a Wednesday afternoon.  _ People who doubt and criticize me are not automatically evil, you freak. _

Peter sulked at this. But she wasn’t done.

_ If Beck is sketchy, though, we’ll need hardcore evidence. More than witnesses. More than photos. He is hands down the most popular professor on campus. He needs to be caught red handed doing something irrevocably despicable. _

_ Like what? _

_ I dunno. Kicking a puppy? Stealing food from a starving orphan? I don’t make the news, Peter. I just report it.  _

Despite saying that, it didn’t seem like she was going to be reporting anything at all about their poisonous faculty advisor. Anything negative, anyway. Four days after their not-so-private clash, she greenlit a front-page article about Beck’s new position. Even though it was a dull and purely factual piece, it was a tactic that appealed to Beck’s ego enough that he lifted his metaphorical foot off of her neck. It also got them some of the highest clicks of the school year, irritatingly enough.

MJ was the furthest thing from a kiss ass, but she wasn’t interested in protracted battles either. It was a strategic choice, but it sucked. And then, about a month in, when nothing obvious came up about Beck, she signaled that she was clearly ready to put this thing with Beck on the backburner.

It wasn’t like Beck was flouting university rules or breaking the law on work time. Worst case scenario, he was a garden variety jerk, leaning on them to feel like he had some power over their paper. It wasn’t like MJ didn’t have some options there. She could always complain to the president that Beck was getting in the way of running the damn thing, for starters. They had evidence. Their writers were confused and stressed out, important stories were taken out of circulation, and, for the first time in 3 years, they’d failed to meet their deadline because Beck kept stepping around MJ to edit one of Doreen’s articles.  _ Incorrectly. _

But relying on the president to intervene could be dangerous. It could paint a huge target on MJ’s back, especially if Beck opted to play a victim to the students. Worse, McCoy was a big fan of mediation. A complaint likely wouldn’t remove Beck at all—not unless that complaint was for especially inappropriate behavior. Behavior that Beck would never engage in on a property full of former and active Pro Heroes and their very powerful students.

MJ needed evidence of a kicked puppy. Peter decided to look for one. So he started following Beck occasionally after school.

Between Drake, Brock, and now Beck, Peter wondered how one tactfully worded stalking in their resume. Especially when that stalking had to be balanced with a full course load and a full-time volunteer position as everyone’s least favorite wall crawler.  _ Time management skills _ didn’t quite have the oomph Peter was looking for.

On top of that, Beck’s routine off campus was as boring as his routine on campus. He worked out during the weekends. He shopped for food every Monday. He jogged every Tuesday afternoon before heading back into ESU to teach his night class. Every Wednesday was date night. Packed full of classes, Thursdays and Fridays saw little activity outside what was necessary to take Beck from his front door to his bed. And, although he hit the weights hard on Saturday, he vegged out and watched sitcoms every Sunday until at least 2 pm before heading off to the gym.

Very, very boring stuff.

At first, the only sketchy thing Peter could observe was the fact that Beck seemed to be juggling at least three girlfriends—including, embarrassingly enough, ESU’s own Songbird, Melissa Gold. Peter was never close enough to figure out the parameters of these relationships—monogamous, casual, just for fun, open ended, etc—but he felt bad for Gold regardless. Gold rather publicly lost her longtime boyfriend last year when the man was killed during a shootout, and she had been grieving ever since. Across from Beck, Gold seemed perkier and happier than she’d ever been in any of the Gear classes Peter had taken with her. He hated Beck a little, just for that. Beck was a dick.

There was only ever one other sketchy thing Peter couldn’t explain, and it was happening right now.

Instead of heading home, as he did every Tuesday night after class, Beck took a hard left. Peter followed him at a distance as he walked for a couple of blocks. Then Beck ducked into an infamous bar, putting a halt to Peter’s stalking entirely.

Often the subject of raids, the bar was a high crime place that attracted criminals of the more mundane variety. But it was not unknown to harbor a villain or two while they licked their wounds.

Peter only knew of it because it wasn’t allowed. ESU students were actively steered away from it on the pain of suspension—or even expulsion. No one wanted to see a drunk baby Hero throwing hands with a drunk villain, or so ESU reasoned. Besides, ESU students were known for flaunting their attendance to the school with as much gusto as any kid who got into an Ivy League school. They were proud of their university. Of what it said about them. Of what it meant for their futures.

That blind and untested pride was a volatile match for a villain’s sore attitude, especially one that just wanted to drink and be left alone.

Being sober, free of ESU memorabilia, and, more importantly, without a mask, Peter wasn’t about to spring that particular trap. And yet, he hesitated, staying outside. Should he follow Beck? He had a hood on. He could get away with it and avoid Beck as much as any troublemakers within. But if Beck identified him, it was all over—ESU, his investigation, his attempt at legitimacy. Hell, Tony Stark himself would probably be pissed at him. And MJ. And Aunt May, once she learned the context.

The only silver lining to getting caught was the fact that Peter was almost certain Beck would try and blackmail him instead. It was a hell of a way to get the evidence and proof to come to him instead. Was it worth it, though? It was hardly kicking puppy territory, but it would be more than Peter had been able to collect on him before.

_ Beloved ESU Prof Blackmails Disgraced Support Track Senior. _ That had to catch some clicks.

Decisions, decisions.

Still wryly flipping the possibility over in his mind, Peter was abruptly kicked in the mind, and kicked  _ hard. _ Obeying his spidey sense, he ducked under his hood, pulling it lower as he cast his attention to the trigger of that feeling.

What a blast from the not so recent past. Spiky dangerous Marco and his smirking friends were walking down the street, coming towards Peter. They were talking—and laughing—about some meal they’d just skipped from. It seemed like when they couldn’t intimidate people to pay for them, they just didn’t pay at all.

Mouth flattening grimly, Peter stepped out of the way. But that didn’t stop him from getting shoulder-checked by one of them. The guy, just a handful of years older than Peter, sneered at him as they made eye contact and offered no apologies—and not a single shred of recognition either. Peter hadn’t made much of an impression.

Oh well.

Peter shoved his hands in his pockets, watching as they entered that rundown bar like they owned the place, marching in with enough force that the door cracked against the wall. Peter frowned as the door closed shut behind them, remembering the lack of respect they’d shown other bar staff that awful night. Up until they met Deadpool, that was. It seemed like they learned nothing. What horrible bullies.

But before Peter could dive too deep into how much he hated people like Marco, the man himself appeared. Sweating profusely, he stumbled out of the bar, landing on a knee. Half of his face was bloody, missing the needles that would normally sit there. A second later, his friends came out too. Peter watched in disbelief all three of them skittered down the street like spiders running from a fire.

To Peter’s disbelief, Beck himself came out a minute later. He ran a hand through his hair, chuckling lightly to himself. He followed the path that Marco took but at a far more sedate pace.

It seemed like the bullies ran into a bigger bully. But was Beck the bully or did he watch it all happen?

Peter started to fall into step behind Beck when his spidey sense prickled. He turned his gaze back to the bar, his hair standing on end under the heavy gaze of an unfriendly stranger. He had been seen.

And he had been targeted.

The bar door abruptly burst open. Alarmed, Peter bolted across the street, narrowly dodging a taxi. Tires squealed as the car was shoved out of the way behind him, and Peter kept running, dodging into a dark alley. The thuds of hefty, quick steps followed him, even as he put on a burst of speed. Even as he vaulted over a six-foot fence. Even as the adrenaline coursing through his veins meant he was sprinting probably the fastest he had ever sprinted in his life.

He was being followed by two very,  _ very  _ large men. They were fast and strong. He would admire their almost perfect synchronicity, if it didn’t mean Peter was about to be crushed.

Heart pounding, he entered and exited alley ways, charged and slipped through traffic, and twisted and ducked around corners until his sides hurt, until it started getting harder to breath. He could taste the sweat on his own lips and knew no relief. The whole time, he stayed low to the street because, whatever was following him? They owned the skyline, leaping from rooftops and walls like bizarro versions of, well, Spider-Man himself.

And without outing himself, there would be no outrunning them.

Until, of course, they chose to stop. Which they did, about fifteen blocks away from the bar. Peter skidded behind a parked car, panting as he spied on them from below. He vibrated with stress but tried to stay as quiet—and as vigilant—as he could.

The two men were, as he thought, very large. They weren’t, however, wearing dark suits as he’d assumed. Rather, they were covered with a goopy substance Peter had seen before on Eddie Brock’s eight-foot bodyguard. Peter was disturbed to see that the bodyguard wasn’t an isolated case. Still, it had to be a Quirk. What kind of gear had teeth like that anyway?

In any case, maybe Peter’s next conversation with Eddie Brock didn’t need to be entirely adversarial; neither of the men on the roof looked like his bodyguard. Not exactly, anyway. While still as tall, they were both thinner, lacking the bulk of Brock’s mysterious friend. They were slightly different colors too. Brock’s friend was largely an inky black with some white ribbing. Although the men on the roof had a lot of goopy black in their Quirk and/or gear, one was more of a grayish white and the other man was mostly dark green.

They were also lacking the terrifying shared rhythm of the earlier chase now. The white one was crouching, cradling his head in his hands. Impatient and still scouring the street for Peter, the green one snapped its needle teeth in the cowering white one’s direction. The man hunched up further, saying something to the more aggressive green guy. Peter couldn’t hear his words from this distance, but the voice sounded panicked.

Then the white one abruptly threw itself off the roof. He landed hard enough to trigger a car alarm, but that didn’t stop him from running down the street. His thundering steps grew quieter and quieter the further he ran away.

Peter dared a sigh of relief. One down, he thought, shifting his focus back to the green one.

But the green one was looking right back at him.

Peter stiffened, caught up in the bone white glare of those strange, impossible eyes. Fixated on the haunting grin arranged of far too many teeth. Brock’s bodyguard had been so… chatty. He hadn’t really had the chance to fully drink him in, to fully realize the truth. This person was more monster than man.

And Peter… Peter was  _ exhausted _ already. His aching muscles felt like concrete, his joints like handcuffs.

But when the green one moved, so did he. He had no choice.

Peter fled. He heard the thud of the man—creature?—hitting the building behind him, bricks crackling under heavy hands. Sprinting, Peter hurled himself across another busy street, narrowly avoiding a bus. He didn’t look back, not even when he heard the almost meaty sound of something so large jumping. But when he didn’t hear anything for a full block, he spared a look behind, eyes darting to the roof, to the trees, to the streets, to the fire escapes—

Which meant Peter couldn’t stop himself from colliding with the man who rounded the corner right in front of him.

They both grunted from the impact. Hands tightened on Peter’s biceps as Peter reeled from coming to such an abrupt stop. A whiff of expensive cologne invaded Peter’s senses from where his head was buried in another man’s coat. Surprised he didn’t lay the guy out on the floor, Peter automatically apologized, looking over his shoulder one more time before giving his focus back to the victim of his inattention. 

And he froze. Blue-green eyes stared back into his own, wide and as stunned as Peter felt. Almost as an afterthought, the man dropped his hands from Peter’s arms. “Heya, Pete,” he said.

Peter swallowed a couple of times before saying, “Heya, Harry,” in a dull, quiet voice.

Worst day ever, he thought. He could taste copper in his mouth from the collision. And not only was he being chased by people with monster Quirks, he’d lost track of Beck and any chance of figuring out why the professor had entered a banned bar. Seeing his ex after so many years of silence was just the icing on the cake.

Harry wasn’t immune to the awkward feeling here. “Left the stove on in your dorm or something?” He sounded a little winded.

So did Peter. But creeping out behind the misery was the realization that Peter needed an explanation for running at a full sprint on a New York City sidewalk in the middle of the night in a hoodie and dark clothes. People had been arrested for less. “Uh… I think I was almost mugged?” Peter looked around, almost expecting to see the perpetually grinning ghoul that was his shadow.

But the creepy man was gone without a trace. Peter’s spidey sense wasn’t even acting up anymore.

Harry’s expression darkened. He too cast a suspicious glance up and down the streets. Peter would have appreciated the solidarity, had it not been completely ridiculous. “What are you going to do, aggressively heal their paper cuts?” Peter said. He’d meant it to be a joke. He really did. But the bitterness would not be denied and, for once, he embraced it. “A sidekick protecting a sidekick. What would your father think?”

Harry tossed him an unimpressed stare. He had been a difficult kid when they dated, sensitive to even the kind of friendly sarcasm Peter and Ned threw at each other on a daily basis. But Peter saw nothing of that easily wounded ego now. He stood taller and his gaze was far more direct. He exuded confidence now where, before, he had none.

“I’m not a sidekick anymore. And I don’t particularly care what he thinks.”

“…Huh,” Peter said at length. Then he blinked, shaking himself out of it. “Anyway, sorry about running into you. I have to head back now.” He turned and started walking down the street.

“Let me take you back?” Harry offered, following Peter for a step or two. He came to a stop when Peter did.

“Why?” Peter said flatly.

“It’s just…” Harry hesitated. He looked down and clenched a fist in front of his chest. Then, eyes sharper, he looked up again. “It’s been literally years since you made eye contact with me, Pete. Can you blame me for wanting to prolong the experience?”

Heat made its way to Peter’s cheeks. “I can blame you for a lot, actually,” he said with venom, old anger burbling to the surface.

Harry didn’t seem deterred by Peter’s temper. “So, let’s talk about that,” he said, his tone pleading. “ _ Really _ talk about it. The way we should have years ago.” When Peter didn’t respond, Harry huffed out a laugh, taking a step back. “Well, maybe not  _ now _ . You almost got… mugged. You clearly want your space.” Harry had no idea. “But what about Friday afternoon? Are you free?”

Peter stared at him. Then, frustrated, he looked away. He wanted to say no. Peter wanted to hold on to his anger at Harry, his hatred for Norman. He wanted Harry to hurt now, just a little, so that he could get a taste of what Peter felt when he had betrayed him.

But all these feelings were so heavy and so exhausting and so completely counter to the way Peter wanted to live his life. How Ben and his parents would have wanted him to live his life. Despite what some people thought, hating the Osborns was not a personality trait. And, besides, didn’t Peter deserve some closure too? How much of his inability to keep relationships going came from this basic distrust learned from dating Harry Osborn?

He wanted this thing with Wade to work so badly, and it wasn’t going to if he kept shooting him in the foot like this. No matter what Wade said, resentment was never attractive, no matter whose face was wearing it.

So Peter sighed irritably, pulling out his phone. “Yeah, I’m free. Text me when you’re ready. My number is the same. You’ll have to unblock me first.”

“I… uh… I never blocked you in the first place.”

Peter looked up sharply at that, his stomach twisting. But Harry was looking at his own phone, the screen lighting up his features in the darkness. Under other circumstances, Peter might have felt something about that admission. Instead, he felt nothing. Just a whole lot of resignation, numbness, and disinterest.

Strangely, this was somewhat relieving. This was a person Peter was so sure he was going to change the world with. It was weirdly freeing to know that he no longer lived rent free in Peter’s head. He was just one chapter in the story of Peter’s life.

And they would close that chapter on Friday. Peter couldn’t wait.


	10. Chapter 10

Peter probably should have waited. This was unbelievably awkward.

“So, you were studying abroad, huh?”

This was not the in-your-face blow-up confrontation Peter always (secretly) wanted from his ruined relationship with one Harry Osborn. He’d wanted tears, ideally not his own. He’d wanted apologies. Genuine ones. He’d wanted Norman to pay, somehow. He’d wanted his uncle’s reputation cleared, even if the people who knew and loved Uncle Ben best never judged him for the mud he’d been dragged through after his death.

(But he always knew he was hoping for too much. After all, some wrongs were never, ever righted.)

Instead of a dramatic confrontation, he got a walk in Central Park with his ex. Awkward small talk. Avoided gazes. A careful two-foot distance.

“I’ve been back for a year and a half,” Harry replied at several long beats, bewildered.

“Oh.” Peter dug his hands a little deeper in his coat.

He’d welcomed the break from school at first. The week had been rough. MJ wasn’t thrilled with his sneaky tactics with Beck, and she was even less impressed with what little he’d come up with. On top of that, he’d missed a pop quiz in a class he’d skipped to deal with a jumper. It effectively dropped his score by a whole letter grade in a class he was already struggling in.

And the day before that, he’d caught—and ripped open—his backpack on a door handle in front of a bunch of people in Hero Track, an act that got him lots of laughs and zero offers of help.

And, finally, to top it all off, Dr. McCoy was trying to strongarm him into some new “ambassadorship” role for Support Track, a thankless task that would put him in charge of keeping visiting professor, Shiro Yoshida—aka Sunfire—from charring some of his more annoying classmates (and Pietro) to a crisp.

Peter was exhausted. And it wasn’t even finals or midterm season yet.

Peter would have been happier about the distraction with Harry that afternoon if Harry hadn’t chosen such a stereotypical activity to do on a date. There were couples all around them, snuggling into each other in the early winter chill. The afternoon sun was melting sparse collections of snow into tiny puddles, and the final leaves of the season clung to their branches stubbornly, even amongst deadened neighboring branches. It was irritatingly picturesque.

“I guess I haven’t been paying attention.” Peter immediately negated that by saying, “I haven’t seen you in class.” He winced. He looked away when he felt Harry’s gaze on him.

“I got bumped from Support Track to Hero Track while abroad,” Harry explained. Peter’s eyes darted back to him. “My first assessment… was incomplete.”

“Oh,” Peter said before turning his head away again. Everyone said that when they got reassessed.  _ Clearly, the first person didn’t do it right. Clearly, I must be stronger than this. _ Peter already knew Harry could be two-faced, but hearing this from him made Peter want to punch a wall. If there was anyone who’d had an incomplete Quirk assessment, it was Ned, not Harry.

Ned’s Quirk was extraordinary! A spark of miraculous genius on top of an already extremely bright mind. An almost cosmic and ineffable insight in how things could be put together. No matter what field he went into, he was going to revolutionize it. The fact that they’d pigeonholed him into just being tech savvy was almost criminal.

Harry, on the other hand, had always had a very obvious and very strong Quirk. But because it was expressed best through healing, his Quirk automatically made him a sidekick. When they were together, Harry had felt a lot of anguish over it, and over what it meant with his rocky relationship to his strongman of a father, and Peter had spent a lot of his mental energy trying to help Harry to get over it.

“ _ You’re going to be the next Helen Cho, _ ” he’d always say, invoking the image of South Korea’s most famous Pro Hero, ReGenesis. Cho had a fantastically strong healing Quirk. She called it “Miracle”, an apt name for the kind of damage she could reverse.

She could have skated by with that power alone, but then she took it to the next level by inventing a piece of gear she called the Cradle. It radically amplified her Quirk. With it, she went from being able to heal almost anything to being able to bring even the (very recently) dead back to life. 

It was incredible. Quirks that could bring down buildings were everywhere. But Quirks that could heal on that scale? They were priceless.

This, Peter believed with all of his heart. He would have loved to have Harry’s Quirk—still did, as a matter of fact. By the time they were dating, Peter’s childish greed for his mother’s wings had been replaced by an adult’s urge to heal the people they loved.

What a gift Harry had. And Harry almost believed it. For a while.

But the true winner of that debate was Norman Osborn. His stance that Quirks like Harry’s were the Quirks of weaklings overrode everything—and worse for Harry, Norman didn’t have time for the weak. Not unless they brought him something of value. Harry knew that better than anyone. He had crumbled under those expectations, and he had betrayed Peter for them.

It was the one and only time that Peter ever looked at Harry and thought,  _ weak _ .

But that was Harry of the past. The Harry of now seemed far more settled and far less stressed. He held his shoulders straighter. His expression was more serene. He seemed to fit better in his own skin—and like it—than Peter had ever seen before. Just by demeanor alone, Peter could almost believe his claim that he didn’t care what his father thought anymore.

Peter struggled to articulate this. “You look… good?”

Harry’s face twisted. “God, Pete,” he blurted out, clearly not immune to the uncomfortable tone of this entire experience. “Do you have to be so awkward? We have too much history for you to be treating me like-”

“Like an ex I wasn’t expecting to deal with today?” Peter bit back. He could admire Harry’s growth without enabling his attitude. They scowled at each other briefly.

Then Harry hung his head, hiding in the collar of his expensive coat. “…Right,” he said softly. “Right.”

Peter’s patience was wearing thin. This wasn’t shaping out to be the closure he was looking for.

He didn’t so much dump Harry as he dropped him, cold turkey. Blocking him in every point of contact. Delivering perpetual silent treatment. Straight up looking through him when he had to. It was childish, and Peter wasn’t proud of it. But Peter had felt so brutally betrayed, and he didn’t know how to deal with it other than to pretend Harry no longer existed. He hadn’t been aiming to hurt Harry, but it was still petty and stupid.

They should have at least spoken. Peter could fix that right here and right now. Only… he didn’t know where to begin. He chewed on his lip instead, letting the silence grow.

Fortunately, Harry seemed to be on the same wavelength. “In certain social circles,” he said in a deeper voice, “the very idea of ghosting  _ the _ Harry Osborn would be unfathomable.” His tone was hushed and a touch over dramatic, inviting ridicule. His eyes were twinkling with hidden mirth.

Peter took the bait. “Well, those social circles probably didn’t know you in high school, you big honking giraffe.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Harry broke first, wheezing, and Peter was quick to follow. For a moment, Peter wasn’t in a park with his ex. Instead, he was crammed between library shelves, huddled in the back corner of a classroom, sitting on the edge of a car seat… having a private moment. Sharing a strange joke. Building a fond memory.

“No, they did not,” Harry said, wiping a tear from his eyes. “The number of people I had to pay off to forget my less than graceful past…”

There was that wistful feeling again. Peter was even smiling. “What number is that?”

“Well. It’s not zero.”

They laughed again, and it felt freeing to do so. Like ripping off a bandage or stretching a well-worked out muscle. Peter felt like he could breathe, like the miasma of his resentment was dissipating just a little.

Maybe this was what McCoy was talking about when he said Peter should give his heart more of a break. It hurt far less to remember the Harry he liked than the Harry who’d wronged him. Harry had chosen to run to his dad, but in the end, they were both pawns of Norman Osborn. Both victims. Both used and discarded.

Hell, Peter doubted Norman even remembered his name.

They walked a little bit longer, the space between them less pronounced and the air less uncomfortable.

“Thank you for breaking your silence, whatever the reason was.” This surprised Peter out of his thoughts. Harry’s expression was serious, and his eyebrows needled together in a way that was bound to give his forehead wrinkles one day. “It was painful to watch you over these years, doing everything you could to pretend I wasn’t there.” Eyes jumping to Peter’s, Harry inclined his head slightly in Peter’s direction. “But I get it. I do. What I did was hurtful. Useless. A vain attempt of a stupid child to capture the attention of a man who cares about no one but himself.”

Peter might have wished for this, but he could hardly believe it was happening. He said nothing.

Expression twisting, Harry reached out, stopping them as he hooked a hand in Peter’s elbow. “I am… deeply and truly sorry.”

Peter still said nothing. Harry sure looked the part. His gaze was sincere and direct—and the hand on Peter was warm enough to seep through his sweater. Warm enough to melt the sad piles of snow around them.

Had he been this warm last Tuesday when they literally ran into each other? He had been wearing gloves and a thick coat—different than the ones he was wearing now. Did he have a fever? It was strange that this was where Peter’s mind would leap. Here Harry was, finally apologizing, and all Peter could think was that he had to be sick.

Peter shook his head slowly. “You’ve changed.”

“You’ve noticed?” Harry shot him a devastating grin, provoking in Peter another vivid sense memory: leaning over a high school desk and poking Harry’s cheek until he smiled. He hadn’t lost his charm. “I have changed. I’ve changed a lot.” He flexed his free hand over his chest. “My belief in myself. My confidence. I could have never approached you on my own before this. I was too scared-”

Peter wondered how badly Harry thought this confrontation would go if he was already so giddy at the fact Peter had yet to throw his apology in his face. Peter supposed he wasn’t very nice when they met last.

He had yet to let go of Peter’s elbow, though, and Peter felt suddenly… exposed. Distractedly so.

_ Worryingly _ so.

And Harry, as usual, couldn’t read the room to save his life. “-to  _ repair _ what was between us,” he continued to say passionately.

Distracted, Peter looked around the park. His spidey sense never liked being watched, which saved his secret identity more than once. It was strange to be watched now in his civilian persona. Who was interested in boring Peter Parker?

He needed to find out. Poor Harry. Peter was missing every other sentence at this point, consumed by the itch in the back of his head. Someone was looking at him. Someone was watching them. And that someone wasn’t being very sneaky about it either, because under one of the few trees that hadn’t succumbed to winter was none other than Wade Wilson.

Peter was instantly delighted.

Wade looked conspicuously inconspicuous. In heavy work jeans and a zip up jacket, he stood slightly behind the trunk. He had a newspaper hooked under his arm. His face was covered by a medical mask and a strategically angled cap—but who could mistake those eyes, especially when they were fixed on Peter. Sharp, focused, and widening the longer the two of them held gazes.

Peter rolled his arm out of Harry’s grip. “That’s nice,” he said dismissively, already leaning towards Wade. “I’m happy for you. We’ll have to talk more at a different time. Catch up, even.” Peter would decide later how to respond to the apology.

Harry seemed surprised. “Peter-”

“See you on campus,” Peter called out over his shoulder, jogging away. Feeling a little guilty, he spared a look over his shoulder at Harry, who looked frustrated and also resigned. Peter steeled his spine. He might be inclined to forgive his ex-boyfriend. He might even be inclined to befriend him down the road. But he wasn’t going to listen to Harry gush over his journey of self-discovery when he kicked it off by breaking Peter’s heart. Was it petty to want a little more groveling?

Besides, Peter had his current romantic interest in sight, even if that interest was hiding even more from him now, leaning his back against the trunk. He saw Wade at least twice a week these days, and texted him at least three times as much, but that familiarity didn’t stop this feeling of euphoria at the sight of him. He was really, really into this guy.

And on top of that happiness was also a strange sense of… satisfaction? He’d been in Central Park a lot this term, stalking a certain ex-reporter in the interest of trying to understand Wade a little bit more. But all this time going after Eddie Brock, and he never once saw Deadpool. Not a hint. He’d looked quite a bit. And now, here he was.

“Hey!” It felt like solving a math problem in music class, but Peter would take it. “Fancy seeing you here.” He stepped over a low bush and rounded the tree to face Wade, smiling. “Small world!”

“Small world,” Wade echoed quietly, his voice rough. He was pulling the brim of his hat down further, obscuring his eyes.

Peter stopped within arm’s reach, suddenly wondering if he—not Harry—was the oblivious one. When Peter accidentally bumped into Wade at a bodega last weekend, Wade had squealed and dropped ten bottles of vegetable oil. He’d scooped Peter up into a hug so massive, Peter’s feet had left the floor. Then again, he’d been in his full Deadpool persona. Wade was always a little quieter in his civilian skin.

Wade was very quiet now.

“I’ve missed you.”

Wade hunched a bit at this. He let out a shuddering breath and slowly pushed himself away from the tree. “Ditto. Wanna come with me?” He seemed tense.

“Uh. Sure.”

Wade nodded once, then grabbed Peter’s hand, tugging him back on the path. “Good,” he muttered. “We shouldn’t have this conversation in public anyway.”

Peter’s stomach twisted but he stayed quiet for a few minutes, processing. As they walked, his eyes dropped to their hands. It was far from the first time he’d been held on to like this, but Wade tended to use the grip to reel him in closer. Or he swung their arms gleefully like a child. Or he used the touch to strategically upgrade to an elbow over Peter’s shoulders or an arm around Peter’s waist.

But now, both of their arms were almost fully extended, and Wade was walking fast, almost too fast for Peter to fully catch up without running. The distance was jarring. Confusing. Too at odds with the way things usually worked between effusive, affectionate Wade Wilson and one Peter Parker.

Peter couldn’t wait for whatever was about to happen anymore. He’d rather hash it out now. So he stopped, digging his heels in. Wade, still hanging on to Peter, stopped too and flailed, almost comically overbalanced. He clearly hadn’t expected to lose this particular tug of war.

“Are you mad at me?” Peter asked anxiously.

Startled, Wade looked back at him, but this wasn’t coming out of nowhere. There was so much Wade could be mad at. Peter lied constantly. Peter dug into Wade’s past—and present too. And between patrolling as Spider-Man, the demands of his education, and his little investigative side projects, Peter was always busy. Despite declaring that he wanted to date Wade, Peter almost never made time for him. And Wade had been so understanding of that, disappearing himself for days or weeks at a time for his own gigs, so you’d think Peter would have made up for that with great communication. Wrong! Wade texted him almost constantly, and while Wade was the one he texted back the most consistently, there were still many periods of silence and dropped conversations. Forgotten questions. Missed opportunities.

If Wade wanted to end whatever they were doing, well… he had plenty of ammunition to do it, both known and unknown.

“You’re overthinking this. By, like, a lot.” Wade was visibly rattled. “That’s saying something coming from me! I’ll have you know, canonically? I have three ‘inside’ voices to your one. You’re outnumbered, bub-”

The quick reassurance would have soothed Peter at any other time. But in that very moment, Peter barely heard him. “If you want to break up with me, please. Do it over text.” In-person hurt so much more.

Wade’s eyes widened. Then he swore under his breath before letting go of Peter’s hand. He tugged his mask under his chin and then placed both of his hands—well, one hand and one newspaper—on Peter’s shoulders, marching him back off the path and into a different tree than before.

Mired in his own spiraling and self-defeating thoughts, Peter didn’t see the point. This wasn’t going to gain them any privacy they didn’t have on the path, but he submitted to it regardless. Miserable, he watched Wade look both ways before propping the corner of his newspaper next to Peter’s left ear. It flapped open, hiding his face from the other occupants of the park.

“Wade, I don’t-”

Whatever he was trying to say was lost.

Because Wade was kissing him now, his mouth soft against his own. When Peter sucked in a breath and didn’t push him away, Wade leaned into him and kissed him again and again, his whole body pressing Peter into the bark. Gripping his jacket, Peter sluggishly—then enthusiastically—reciprocated, his ugly thoughts replaced with something softer. Lighter.

He’d misread something along the way. Relief was too small of a word for what he felt about this, so he chose not to think too hard about a label at all.

He could have stayed there forever, warmed only by Wade’s body heat, swapping kisses. In fact, when Wade paused, Peter popped on his toes to halt his retreat, fingers catching on the string of his mask. Wade chuckled against his mouth, nipping his bottom lip in retaliation. His free hand slid into Peter’s back pocket, tugging their hips together and-

Oh.

Wade was hard in his jeans. Peter wasn’t exactly disinterested himself, but the look Wade gave Peter just then was heated, indecent. Hungry. He suddenly understood why Wade said this wasn’t meant for public consumption. Thumb gliding across Wade’s jawline, Peter realized they were going to get in trouble. Hardly hidden by Wade’s paper, they were already gathering dirty looks, even from the jealous love birds.

Wade sighed, pressing his cheek against his. His hand left Peter’s pocket. His arm hooked around Peter’s waist, pulling him into a tight hug. When he spoke again, Peter could feel the words as much as he heard them.

“You drive me  _ crazy _ , Petey,” Wade whispered. “Sorry for freaking you out. I’ll use my words next time. But you should have seen yourself, honey. Walking, looking like a dream, practically arm-in-arm with some GQ looking motherfucker-”

An icy prickle penetrated the earlier warmth. Peter was exactly as oblivious as he feared. “It wasn’t a date!” Was that what it looked like?

But Wade was snickering. “Oh, I  _ know _ ,” he purred, his hug tightening. Then he pulled back. “Because what guy on a date goes from someone like  _ that _ ”—his tone turned dark—“to something like  _ me _ ?”

Peter had always liked Wade’s smile, but this one wasn’t it. It was a sardonic, almost mean grin, an expression that invited mockery as much as it exuded hate. It made him look scary. It made him look cruel. It made him look like the deranged villain he used to be.

But like the snow around him, it was temporary. It faded, gentling in stages the longer he looked at Peter until finally, he looked like Wade again. The newspaper fell and Wade’s hand, now freed, cradled Peter’s cheek.

“But when you saw me… hell, Petey,” he whispered, voice awed. “You lit up. Like  _ fireworks _ , sweetheart.” Peter flushed, his skin prickling pleasantly. Flustered, he turned his face into Wade’s palm. “You couldn’t leave that pretty boy fast enough. And you came to  _ me _ .” Letting out a shaky breath, Wade dropped his forehead to Peter’s shoulder, resting on him. “So fuck Cable and his paranoia. I’m done pumping the brakes. You’re coming home with me, and I’m not letting you out of my sight until your next class.  _ At least. _ ”

Peter swallowed at the intensity and need in his voice. Dizzy with the possibilities, he flexed his fingers against Wade’s chest. This was backwards. Out of order. But he wanted it very, very much.

Wade muttered something about a fic needing to earn its ratings. Then his head shot up. “Unless you don’t want to…?” Endearingly, he started babbling about things they could do instead.

And they were all lovely things, truly. A continued walk along the trails of Central Park. A shared meal. A movie at Wade’s place. But attracted by the promise of more, Peter interrupted him, stretching up and kissing him again. He didn’t bother with the newspaper, scattered and wet on the bare ground.

-

“What, no sex montage? We’re ten chapters in. I thought we earned at least one sex montage.”

Peter rose to his knees over Wade and said, a little breathlessly, “You want your sex life to be boiled down to a highlights reel?” He shook his head. “What a way to tell a guy he’s moving glacially slow.”

Wade opened, then closed his mouth, clearly thinking better of it. “…Move at your own speed, sweetheart.”

Peter snorted. Contrary to his impatient words, Wade’s tone had been teasing. He was sitting up on the bed, as naked as Peter was, bracing his weight behind him on thickly muscled arms. His eyes were fixated on Peter’s face, wide with wonderment as Peter slowly, slowly,  _ slowly _ eased himself onto Wade’s cock. 

Looking down at him, Peter wondered briefly if this was all… too sudden, maybe. Too intimate. A small ember bursting into a wildfire. All Peter knew was that he, the king of overthinking, had zero time to overthink this—and now he was burning from the inside out, the victim to a flame he’d perhaps begged for.

All he knew was that Wade’s joy was infectious and that it was possible to want to taste a smile.

Peter gave himself a moment to adapt to the sensation of being filled, panting up at the ceiling. He’d had a few hookups in the last couple of years, but it had been a while since he’d indulged in this particular act. It all felt strangely new.

And he didn’t have a chase to distract him either. Wade had seen to that. They hadn’t gotten more than three steps into his messy apartment before he dropped to his knees and got Peter off. The touch of his mouth had been overwhelming, the fervor more so, and Peter came immediately. No stamina whatsoever. He followed up this embarrassing performance by flopping bonelessly over an unsuspecting Wade and his shoulder, an act that almost slammed his face into the ground.

Peter’s only saving grace in this humiliation was that Wade seemed to think this was hot. He wouldn’t shut up about it, pressing heady kisses to every bit of Peter he could reach—the back of Peter’s elbow, his bared hip, his clenching side. Tightening his arms around Peter’s middle in a modified fireman’s carry, he then stood, practically skipping them both over to Wade’s sad mattress in the back room of the place.

Despite the location change, he hadn’t asked for anything afterwards, letting Peter breathe. For the last ten minutes, he seemed content to hold and snuggle Peter, which only fueled Peter’s determination to match Wade’s enthusiasm.

Or ride it, at least. Fully seated now, Peter was already halfway there.

But, oh boy, was Wade a sight. Dim yellow and gray light came in through the room’s only window as nightfall quickly approached, but it was enough to see by. He’d shyly flipped the switch when they’d entered, but Peter’s eyes never had an issue with darkness. The play of light and shadows highlighted the sheer physicality of Wade, the honed bulk that was usually downplayed by comically bad posture and a frequently bombastic personality. His hazel eyes, so often hidden, caught the light like the edge of a sharp knife. But when they reached out to him, his rough hands were gentle and oh so careful on Peter’s hips.

Peter trembled under the weight of them. He felt so stretched and so full, he almost couldn’t stand it. Wade’s cock was buried deep in him right now. His nerve endings were sparking out of his control—and he was hard. Again. Out of some sense of guilt, he half-covered the evidence of this greed. This wasn’t supposed to be about him. 

But if he moved, it was going to be great and terrible and fantastic all at once. Indecisive, he stayed still over Wade, shaking.

“Is this okay?” Wade’s voice was rough and anxious.

Overwhelmed, Peter didn’t answer right away, still trying to process. “More than,” he said finally, thickly.

He wanted to soothe Wade. He wanted to ruin him. Instead, he traced Wade’s mouth with the tips of his fingers, biting his own lip when Wade took that as permission to nip, lick, and suck them into his warm wet mouth, an echo of the treatment he’d received by Wade’s front door. Shuddering at the memory, Peter pressed his other palm against his stomach as if he could feel Wade there, as if he could map out where Wade’s cock was filling him, held firmly in place by Peter’s warm, twitching insides.

Wade let out a pained, helpless noise at the sight of him, pressing Peter’s hand against his mouth so hard that Peter could feel his teeth. After a moment of this, Wade calmed and beamed at him. Then he licked Peter’s palm with a pointed tongue, dragging it to his sensitive wrist until Peter’s hand clenched automatically, until his cock jerked and Wade’s smile took on a mischievous edge.

“As long as you need, babe,” he teased. He looked too satisfied, like a cat who figured out the vast mysteries of can openers.

Peter’s metaphorical hackles rose. Out of sheer stubbornness alone, he got his hazy thoughts back in order. He wet his lips. “So. Wanna go watch that movie and cuddle now? Platonically, of course.”

Wade stared at him in disbelief, then covered his face with his hands, groaning, flopping on his back like an exhausted puppy too drained for this world. “Sure thing, Petey. I got Disney+ just for you.”

Pleased at this easy defeat, Peter chuckled meanly, tapping a nonsensical beat on Wade’s flexing abs. Then, watching Wade fondly, Peter rocked his hips up and down once—a reward for his patience. After so little movement, it was almost too much. They both cried out, both tried to muffle it, and both snickered at each other for the attempt to save face. They were too alike sometimes.

Peter’s face was probably bright red now, but he couldn’t resist the urge to tease. “You know what this needs?” he said, puffing. “More lube.”

“Don’t you start.”

Starting was the problem, in that they’d started with too much lube to begin with. It wasn’t entirely Peter’s fault. Wade had provided the bottle and, in his excitement, shot out a geyser of it all over the two of them. Peter would have died laughing at the chaotic display if Wade hadn’t looked so unbearably defeated. Instead, Peter had choked back his amusement and moved on, but that didn’t mean he was going to completely let it go.

Smiling, Peter leaned forward, tugging Wade’s hands off his face. Despite his play at being grumpy, his expression was warm and amused. Peter pressed a kiss against his cheeks, his chin, and, finally, his mouth before rolling his hips again. And again. And again.

It didn’t take much to find a rhythm. The heat between them built up quickly. Wade threw his weight back on his hands again, letting Peter sit up and keep the reins. Peter soon lost himself in the feel of it, the slide of Wade’s cock in and out, riding out his own pleasure.

What kept him anchored to present was the fact that Wade was just as into this—egging him on, spilling praises, his hips doing micro-jerks into Peter even as he tried to be so good and so still. But he also kept looking back at Peter. Like he couldn’t help but want to watch him, want to see Peter use him so selfishly.

Peter watched through heavy lidded eyes as Wade swallowed harshly. Then Wade put all his weight on one arm. Too distracted by the sight of his thick chest bunching from the move, Peter wasn’t ready for the hot palm Wade dragged from his neck down to the center of his torso and back again, stroking and feeling appreciatively. It caught on his throat, scraped over his pectorals, and pressed into Peter’s heaving chest.

Peter was so, so close.

Wade liked looking at him. That much was clear. Peter might possibly like looking at him even more. But that was a debate he was never going to win, not when Wade kept looking at him like he was a revelation. A gift.

A gift he felt the need to keep checking in on, apparently. “Do you like-” Wade didn’t finish the question. A complicated feeling crunched his face, and he bit his lip hard. Hard enough to make it bleed.

Peter considered him for a long moment. If Wade was asking what he thought he was asking, then it was a silly question. He was here, wasn’t he? There was a warmth building up in Peter’s limbs, a tenderness in his heart. He felt so  _ good _ ; Wade had made sure of it. But Peter never knew what went through Wade’s mind when they were together like this, why he always seemed to doubt that Peter wanted him. Or maybe he did. Peter understood poor self-worth far too intimately.

But of all the confusing conflicts building up in Peter’s life right now, Wade was the only decision he was certain of. It seemed like Peter still had a ways to go in convincing Wade of that.

And that was perfectly okay.

Peter smiled. Ignoring his own arousal for a moment, he slowed the roll of his hips and leaned forward until they shared a breath. “I like everything about this,” Peter whispered, wiping away the blood with his thumb. “About you.” It was true. He’d say it as many times as Wade needed to hear it, and once more for extra credit.

Wade stared at him for a long moment, searching for… something in his face. Whether he found it or not remained a mystery.

In the next moment, Wade  _ snapped _ .

Peter choked out an involuntary whimper when Wade abruptly sat up, a heavy hand hooking around the nape of his neck. The noise was smothered into silence against Wade’s mouth, pressed into obscurity under the force of heated, possessive, and almost frantic kisses. Peter felt like he was drowning, but what a way to go.

Wade continued furiously making out with him, devouring his noises, even as he pulled right out of him and made Peter gasp. Peter didn’t have time to mourn the loss of that feeling deep inside of him. Every touch of Wade’s skin on his own felt directly connected to his nerves, to his still hard cock. Then his back hit a pillow. Peter opened his eyes just long enough to watch Wade crowd into him, hooking Peter’s knees over his elbows and forcing him wide. Then he bent him in half.

Peter struggled with his Quirk, trying not to activate it, trying not to use it to keep Wade there. On him. Around him. Almost in him. Instead, he arched up, peppering Wade’s face with kisses, wrapping his arms around Wade’s back. “Please please please-” he begged, then groaned out loud when Wade reentered him in one solid, perfect thrust.

Peter felt ignited. The rhythm Wade picked up was intense and uncompromising. He was going to break in the best of ways.

In his ear, Wade was breathing raggedly. “Me too. I like you too.” And, because that wasn’t enough, he continued, saying, “You’re good. Lovely. Smart.  _ Brave _ -” Every one of these declarations was met with an extra hard thrust that jolted Peter down to his bones.

Peter couldn’t come up with his own words even if he tried. All he could do was twist and squirm and  _ take it _ . The angle was so different and so good—and it only got better. Peter cried out louder as Wade hit a certain spot inside of him, a spot Peter had evaded all night. Engulfed in ecstasy, all Peter could do was drag his lip against Wade’s cheek, seeking and finding his mouth.

Wade moaned into his sloppy kiss before shaking Peter with the even harder force of his next thrust. Then the next one. Then the next one. He ripped his mouth away to sink his teeth into Peter’s shoulder just sharp enough to hurt. At the same time, he reached between them to fist Peter’s erection, jerking him off hard and fast

The tingles in Peter’s spine burst into white hot sparks.

All coherent thinking flew out the door. Peter splintered apart, and fast. All coherent thinking flew out the door, and his vision started to go fuzzy. He lost control of his voice. This new position was too much;  _ he _ was too much, existing too much, feeling too much. He wanted to race after it. He wanted to run away from it. In spite of him (because of him), it built up and up and up without a care, and Wade never stopped. Wade seemed determined to drag him to the very edge of this and push. Him. Right.

_ Off.  _

Peter came again with force, making a mess between them. Wade groaned into his neck like he’d felt that, like he’d ridden the wave right with him. Hauling Peter up with him, he thrust into Peter a dozen more times before he muffed another moan, riding out the rest of his own pleasure.

And Peter found himself where he’d started in this—panting at the ceiling, raw at the seams, and trembling with overstimulation.

Not regretting a single thing.

-

They laid there, panting and curled together, for quite some time.

Wade recovered much faster than Peter. He pulled his lovely weight off of him, fiddling between them as Peter struggled not to pass out. Wade flung something at the trash—a tied off condom, Peter realized. They shared an exhausted cackle at the wet sound it made when it hit the wall above it instead—they were gross, they were so gross.

Humming quietly, Wade pressed a kiss to the center of Peter’s forehead. It was really nice. Nicer still was when Wade rubbed feeling back into Peter’s thighs as he let them down, one by one.

“You’re… uh. Pretty flexible,” Wade said. “Me likey.” He seemed worried still, just a touch.

It took a while for Peter to process that. “…Wait until I practice Black Widow’s flying scissor legs takedown on you.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Wade said with a snicker. He watched Peter for a little while longer, perched on his knees between his spread thighs, his face close to Peter’s and expression fond. Then, abruptly, he clapped both of Peter’s legs with a force that was all sound and very little sting. Narrowly avoiding Peter’s sprawled out body, he bounced off the bed, rolling into a standing position easily—and with none of the bruised soreness that Peter was slowly becoming aware of.

Lucky man with his lucky Quirk.

Bending at the waist, Wade casually reached down and then tossed Peter’s flannel shirt over Peter’s own hips, a gesture Peter had a hard time parsing through. Wincing, he sat up in the bed as Wade walked out, hands fisting in the material.

Was it to clean up? To hide his nakedness? Or was it a subtle order for him to get out? Wade said he wanted Peter until his next class, but it wouldn’t be the first time Peter had worn out his welcome.

Peter’s anxious feelings barely had time to blossom because Wade bounced back in a moment later, armed with sheets fresh out of the plastic as well as a wet towel. He paused at the sight of Peter sitting up, using his flannel shirt like a blanket. Some of the happiness faded from his expression, but he seemed to get over it quickly, a determined look in his eyes.

“You can do whatever you want, of course,” Wade said, “but you’re tired. At least stay the night if you don’t want to stay the full weekend.” Peter felt a little burst of happiness at this, that they’d misread each other the same way. Meanwhile, Wade stared for a little longer before hanging his head. “I know I don’t have the apartment ready for an extended sleepover, but… I promise you I can fix that. Pronto.”

Peter looked around the dark bedroom. “Huh.” He had noticed Wade hadn’t planned on today. He hadn’t looked around much when they first arrived, but he’d seen enough. Wade’s apartment made Peter’s dorm look like a sterile hospital room. It was probably part of the reason why Wade kept turning the lights off, but there was no switch for smell. The front room reeked of stale food, blood, and gun oil. His bedroom, while messy, at least only smelled like Wade.

Wade was looking at him with hope. “You won’t have to lift a finger,” he vowed. “You can even go to sleep! I’ll take care of you.”

Peter was too pleased by this. He had to keep biting down on it, lest Wade notice. Instead, he tried to be a brat instead. He grabbed a corner of the sheet under him, flapping it once. “You can’t possibly clean around me,” he said in a snooty tone.

But Wade was grinning. Perhaps Peter was far too transparent. “Watch me,” he purred, crawling on the bed over Peter.

A laugh ripped out of Peter at the feeling of a raspberry under his jaw. He twitched away from vengeful fingers seeking out his ticklish spots, trying to deny Wade his easy victory. His chest felt so full. And his head too. Full of useless cotton. Wade wasn’t wrong that he was tired, but wrestling with him gave Peteran echo of a second wind. He would be a good guest.

Once Wade was done bullying Peter, he made good on his word, and Peter… well. He was less helpful than he would have liked. In his exhaustion, Peter lost the towel three times (including once around his own waist), stepped on the half full lube bottle two times, and utterly failed to master the dark arts of fitted sheets. Amused, Wade crowded him the whole time, doubling the difficulty of the simple tasks—if not tripling it! But Peter wouldn’t complain because Wade kept kissing him when he got frustrated, smiling into the kiss until Peter felt fluttery and dopey again.

The only time Wade seemed annoyed was when he discovered that the lube had seeped into the mattress itself from the earlier, ill-fated geyser. He even pouted, an expression that brought Peter no little glee. But he moved on quickly, shoving a towel over the wet spot and calling it a day. He nudged Peter back into bed, spilling over him naturally. Dead on his feet, Peter appreciated the hands-on direction—and he appreciated the warm weight of Wade even more.

Several peaceful seconds ticked past before Wade said into his chest, “Yes, I am the kind of girl who puts out on a first date. What of it?”

He didn’t seem like he was talking to Peter. Frowning, Peter wrapped his arms around his shoulders and mumbled grumpily about how this was hardly their first date—hardly even a date at all! Why, they had quite a few interactions before this that could—rightfully!—be called their first date.

Peter grumbled on a little more until Wade kissed him enough that he gave up the thread of complaints, falling into a comfortable doze.

-

They slept together like that for a few hours. Wade must have woken first because Peter opened his eyes to the sensation of Wade’s thumb rubbing along his hairline over his ear. His whole palm covered the back of Peter’s head, and there was something soothing about it, about the weight, about the gentle petting.

It was truly and fully the middle of the night now, and Wade’s eyes were fixated on the curtain over the window.

“Just a helicopter,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

It was tempting. They had shifted positions since the last time Peter closed his eyes. No longer was Wade his blanket. Instead, he was curled up on his side in between Peter and the door. Still, though, Wade was a top shelf space heater, and his legs were tangled with Peter’s just right. Peter could shuffle a little closer, tuck his nose in the notch of Wade’s collarbone, and catch a few more decadent hours of sleep, but…

There was something off about the still way Wade watched the window. The frown on his face. The glint in his eyes. It reminded Peter of fantasy stories where someone took first watch around the fire, bearing the grim duty of protecting their fellows from all sorts of horrible ends—monsters, man, and Mother Nature herself.

It was a duty he shouldn’t have to bear alone.

So Peter tried to stay awake, rubbing at his face. “This late at night?” he asked, yawning. “And so close to residential buildings…?”

“They must be looking for someone.” A humorless smile pulled at Wade’s mouth. “Maybe even a villain. Who knows.”

Worry crept through his sleep-heavy thoughts. So much of Peter’s vigilante work was done at night, and the only time he saw Deadpool active was during the day. But that didn’t mean Wade’s responsibilities ended at sundown. “Do you need to respond to it?” Was he keeping Wade from doing his work?

Wade snorted. “They’d call me if they wanted me,” he said, relaxing a little. He finally pulled his attention from the window, gifting Peter a wry smile. “The only situation that needs responding to is the sleepy baby Hero in my bed, don’t you think?”

Peter considered that carefully. He propped himself up on his elbow. “Yeah?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh yeah,” Wade echoed, grinning now.

What an opportunity. “Then I have a question,” Peter rasped.

“And I have an answer,” Wade whispered right back.

Peter frowned down at him. “You might want to think about your answer,” he warned him.

Wade reached out and tweaked Peter’s nose. “Nope. Shoot from the hip, always, is my motto.” His gaze warmed. “Go on.” When Peter didn’t immediately respond, he made a ‘come here’ motion with his hand. “I can take it.”

Peter hesitated at this blank check. Then he went for it. “Why did you start flirting with me?”

Wade laughed out loud at that one, clearly not expecting it. “Because you’re cuuuuute. And you committed the great crime of breathing in my presence without projectile vomiting. And yes, I am victim blaming in this one extremely specific case. Next question?” He was joking. That was obvious in everything he was, his bright eyes down to his laughing mouth.

“No, seriously. And I’m not… fishing for compliments, I just…” Grumbling, Peter sat up, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye. “I just don’t understand.”

Why would a Pro Hero bother with a so-called baby Hero anyway? Especially one who was so wishy-washy about his own future? Part of the answer to that was Wade’s own lukewarm attitude towards being a Pro Hero, of course, but it didn’t explain enough. What did he gain from being with Peter?

Peter gained quite a bit from being with him. Wade was so accommodating of him. So understanding. He didn’t seem to respect ESU, but he respected that Peter respected it, and that Peter was making a valiant stab at eventually becoming one of his colleagues. He gave him space when he needed it. Hit him up with a storm of texts only when Peter had asked for them. Failed to interrogate him when Peter’s schedule kept them from meeting.

He even acted as Peter’s sounding board for his frustration—a frustration that maybe Peter didn’t have the right to lay at his feet. Wade was a man who did a full 180° with his whole life, rebuilding it from the ground up. He was a person who chose to turn away from villainy and actively worked to keep others from being lost in it. He was a Hero in more ways than one.

And here he was, humoring someone who was whining about taking the expected next step in their well-established career path. How did Wade stand him sometimes?

Peter knew a lot of this was his poor self-esteem talking. Wade liked him. Wade liked him a lot. That was super obvious. And Wade, for all his teasing and inappropriateness, respected Peter too. It wasn’t just for show. He just didn’t know what Wade saw in him when they met. It was one of the worst nights of his life—one of his worst failures. If Wade hadn’t stepped in, Peter’s lack of decisive action would have likely lost him his friends.

Peter hated himself so much that night. He couldn’t understand how Wade could have been there, could have seen his cowardice, and still thought  _ hey, this is a guy I want to know _ .

“Ah.” Wade hummed under his breath thoughtfully, catching Peter’s attention. He was chewing on his lip, staring down somewhere near his feet. “The real answer is… kinda long. And it might not make sense to anyone but me.” His eyes flicked up to Peter. “You still want it?”

Peter tried not to show his eagerness. “Yeah.”

Wade nodded and settled back, fingers folding over his chest. After a second of watching him, Peter mimicked him until they were side by side on their backs, staring up at the faint patterns of light on the ceiling from the city below.

He could easily fall asleep again. The lights and Wade’s heat and his heavy lids created an almost dream-like atmosphere. Peter couldn’t remember feeling this comfortable or this safe in his dorm room—which was silly, he realized as an afterthought. ESU had a hundred and one different contingency plans to protect their students in the event of an attack. Peter was much more vulnerable here.

He didn’t feel that way, though, especially when Wade’s hand fell on his, threading their fingers together.

“There’s a point in every kid’s life where they realize that they have the power to do something with their Quirk,” Wade started slowly. “They could steal a cookie, avoid a bully, hide from their chores, something. Anything! You remember that, right?”

Of course, Peter did. His abuses of power at that age mostly involved him running away from baths, naked. He told Wade this, which derailed him and amused him to tears. Peter wryly feared introducing Wade to May. He’d have a field day with her photo albums—or worse, her extensive video library. That woman couldn’t delete a file to save her life. Or his pride.

Wiping evidence of his glee off his face, Wade got back to his point. Eventually. “On the heels of discovering that power and that freedom, people start telling you the right—and best—way to use your Quirk is in service to someone else. None of that selfish shit. People start telling you that, with your power, you can be a Hero to someone who needs you. You! Specifically you. Who would have thought?”

“Pro Hero Society recruits young,” Peter replied. Everyone he knew growing up wanted to be a superhero.

“That’s right! And some of us internalize that message, that we can be a hero to someone. And it’s still…  _ selfish shit _ , you know? Even with the altruistic lens.” That surprised Peter. Emboldened, Wade raised a fist to the ceiling. “Think about it. When a kid starts thinking,  _ I’m gonna use my Quirk to save people _ , they aren’t thinking of the common good or the nature of man or the difference between good and evil. They’re not thinking about justice or economics or even peace. Hell no!” He loosened his fist, lifting a finger. “They’re thinking of one thing, one moment in the life of a Hero.” Wade paused. “And that moment is when someone looks at them and  _ knows _ they have been saved.”

The bedroom was very quiet. In the silence, Peter could hear the tick tock of a clock in another room, the whine of a far-off ambulance somewhere on the streets. He could hear Wade’s breathing—the evenness of it, followed by a deeper inhalation and a slow exhale.

Wade’s hand dropped back to the mattress with a thump. His other hand, still entangled with Peter’s, flexed. Quieter, he said, “Now, the reality of Pro Heroes is much more complicated than we were told as kids. There is more than one way to peel a potato. Sometimes, saving people isn’t so hands on. There are… entire  _ agencies _ dedicated to hunting down information on predators so they can be arrested by other people, right? Entire agencies dedicated to cracking the code on illnesses. Entire agencies dedicated to reforming villains. Entire agencies working to end social problems, like food insecurity-”

Wade rattled off a couple more examples to prove his point, but he wasn’t wrong. While Peter rejected the notion that Quirks defined the value of a person, it would be stupid and illogical not to realize that some Quirks were more valuable in certain situations than others.

If Iron Man—either of them—showed up to his house fire, he was going to lose his house. But if someone with a water Quirk came by, Peter would have a chance to actually salvage things. If Peter was beaten by the Rhino, and Ned showed up to his defense, they both were in huge trouble. But if Captain America showed up, their odds were so much better. Similarly, if he was bleeding out on the street, and Deadpool showed up, Peter was going to die. But if Harry did, Peter would survive. It was that simple.

“Heroes like that, they do important shit,” Wade insisted. “Valuable shit. But they’re probably not going to get  _ that moment _ , you know? That eye contact. That face-to-face encounter that we childishly dream of.” He clapped a palm over chest. “My agency too, we’re not in the business of saving people directly. We’re in the business of eliminating threats so that there will be no one to save. I never get to pull someone out of a burning building, because I’m going after the serial arsonist who started the fire. I never give CPR to a drowning victim, because I’m putting a bullet in whoever caused the flood.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I never get…  _ that moment _ .”

Remembering that night, Peter was starting to think he knew where this was going. A second later, Wade confirmed it.

“Then I met you.”

There was an extended silence, a void of words in which Wade seemed to carefully weigh what he was about to say next. On his end, Peter was silent, practically holding his breath as his thoughts churned together in a mixed up mess.

“I was having a horrible week,” Wade admitted softly. “Month, probably. I was really questioning everything. Why I was still around, why I was still present, why I was still  _ alive _ .” He laughed. It was quiet, but it had a bitter note. “Then my buddy Weasel tells me a bunch of students from ESU were getting hassled in his bar. The kind of hassling that makes ESU poke their noses into things, which he didn’t want. The bar… It’s a terrible place for terrible people.”

_ And I am terrible people _ , Wade had said. Peter nodded. “I remember.”

“It took zero skin off my nose to throw my weight around. Absolutely no effort. I go after bullies for shits and giggles and my own morbid entertainment, but you…” Wade paused. Then he turned on his side, pressing their clasped hands to his chest. “I did absolutely nothing, and I was shady as hell about it. Even your friends were ready to throw down with me, but you looked at me like I was a  _ Hero _ .” Despite his words, he actually seemed distraught about this. He wet his lips, frowning. “Like I yanked you, your aunt, your best friends, and an entire box of kittens out of an inferno. All of that… for _ nothing _ -”

“It wasn’t nothing to me,” Peter countered, alarmed by how thick Wade’s voice had become. He shifted to face him. “If only you knew what we went through that day-”

“But I didn’t know!” Wade countered just as quickly. Then, quieter, he said, “I didn’t know.”

Peter wasn’t sure how to deal with an upset Wade. He dropped his eyes instead, breaking his intense gaze. Restless, Peter flexed his hand out of Wade’s grip. He settled it against Wade’s chest, feeling his heart race.

It took Wade almost a full minute, but eventually he reached up, his fingers featherlight on the back of Peter’s hand.

“So, why did I flirt with you, huh?” Wade continued, tone wistful. “Because I wanted your attention, and I would have done anything to keep it. Recite sonnets. Swallow razors.  _ Compliment Weasel. _ It’s just…” He sighed. “Look, Petey. I’ve been a Pro Hero for five years. Signed on the dotted lines. Sat through the boring ass meetings. Incorporated the branding. Picked up my own set of misfits and even launched my own agency.” His fingers tightened. “But you… you were the first person who ever made me feel like one. And I’ve been head over heels for you ever since.”

Now that he’d finished, there was a look of peace on Wade’s face. The ball was in Peter’s court, so to say. Peter was a little jealous how easily Wade could open himself up like that, airing the tender and vulnerable pieces of himself without a thought. He could have stayed with the flippant answer. He could have deflected to something else. Instead, he gave Peter… this.

As for Peter… his heart was a little sore. And full too. This was the most Wade had ever said in one setting, uninterrupted, and it wasn’t like his usual commentary: full of sound and very little meaning. Wade had gifted him with an honest response, walking Peter through his own thoughts. It pained him that he couldn’t take Wade on a similar journey, revealing as much about himself as he did his own feelings.

Peter was always a closed book when it came to these things for many reasons, and he burned with the words he didn’t have.

Instead, he said, “Hold me?”

Wade did so eagerly, draping his long arms around Peter’s torso. Peter shifted until his back was against Wade’s chest, until he could trace Wade’s arms with his palms, until he could find Wade’s fingers and thread them with his own. It was only then, wrapped up in the biggest body hug of his life, that it occurred to Peter that there was something else he could say.

“Thank you for sharing that with me. It means a lot.” Poor, stilted words. But, hey, Peter was trying.

Wade chuckled lightly. “Well, hold that thought. I’m gonna screw up. It’s inevitable.” He paused, then said, “But the more I get to know you, the more I want to prove you right. The more I want to be the kind of Hero that will make you proud.” He hooked his chin on Peter’s shoulder, his knees nudging against the back of Peter’s. “And that scares the shit out of me. Because up until meeting you, being a Hero, well… it just felt like murdering under a different name.”

Peter hummed. Wade snuggled in deeper. They laid there together in silence—a comfortable peace. Gradually, Wade relaxed more and more against him, his breathing deep and steady, while Peter’s never-ending thoughts flipped over each other again and again.

Then, about twenty minutes later, Peter said, “Wade?”

Wade mumbled a quiet, questioning noise. Peter chewed on his lip, afraid this would sound worse out loud than it did in the comfort of his head. At least Wade was mostly asleep. He might not even remember this conversation. With that bolstering his courage, Peter whispered, giving shape to his thoughts.

“About that day we met…” Peter swallowed audibly, his face burning with heat. “Joke or not, I really did feel like you pulled me out of a burning building. So… thanks. Hero.”

It felt good to say it. Only… Wade wasn’t as asleep as Peter thought. He heard a hitch in Wade’s voice, as if he was about to say something before he thought better of it. The sound came again, then muffled when Wade buried his face in Peter’s hair, arms squeezing together, trembling.

In the end, Wade didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t have to.

And Peter felt on top of the world.


	11. Chapter 11

Peter woke up slowly and alone in bed. Before he even opened his eyes, he turned his face into a pillow, grimacing. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out why. Sometime in the last couple hours, the slightly stale and musky scent of the apartment had vanished, smothered to death under the weight of sharp cleaning chemicals. It smelled like Mr. Clean had a rave with all of the other cleaning chemical mascots, if not a full out orgy. What the heck was going on?

Peter needed to get to the bottom of this. He yawned. Mumbling to himself, Peter pushed himself up on his arms and rolled out of bed, looking around blearily. Wade’s bedroom had been significantly tidied since the night before. Previously opened dresser drawers had been snapped shut, and discarded clothes had been tossed into a cloth laundry hamper that had suspiciously crisp (new?) creases. Surfaces had been dusted and trash had been taken away. There wasn’t a single thing on the floor, not even shoes, and the previously murky window was almost crystalline behind the open curtains.

Peter’s own clothes were folded on top of the foot of the bed. He brought them to his face, relaxing at the (comparably) simple scent of clean. Wade had washed them recently. They were still slightly warm. He dressed quietly, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Then, once he was ready, Peter walked over to the closed bedroom door, swinging it wide open.

The bleach smell, unfortunately, immediately intensified. Peter cast a quick look over to the left to the open bathroom. It was shining suspiciously. Just looking at it gave him a migraine. Pulling his collar over his nose, Peter walked past it and into the open space that was the rest of Wade’s apartment.

In the light of day, it looked fairly normal, and nothing like the suggested shapes and lumps of what he’d seen last night. A standard couch was set up in front of a massive flat screen television. A large blanket covered the couch from head to toe. Just beyond it, a small closet door bulged outward suspiciously, giving off the impression of imminent disaster. Rugs were placed all over the floor in a charmingly chaotic way that made Peter think of when he tried to hide spill stains from Aunt May. There was an incomplete patch job on one wall from someone desperately trying to hide the fact that they threw knives there regularly. As someone who didn’t intentionally engage in property damage, Peter wouldn’t have understood what he was looking at, had Wade not forgotten to retrieve the four knives still embedded in the nearby ceiling.

That was the only hint of Wade’s extensive weaponry. There wasn’t even a sniper rifle in sight, which was impressive. Peter was ninety percent sure he’d tripped over one before Wade had shut the front door behind them last night. He’d been thoroughly distracted from investigating further. Understandably.

But the best part of it all was the fact that Wade must have known he’d gone overboard with the cleaning. Tellingly, a massive floor fan was pointed to an open window, blasting bleach-scented air into the city. Shaking his head, Peter moved forward, then stopped, looking down. His foot had nudged something that someone could mistake, at a glance, as a bean bag chair. Peter toed the edge of it until the fabric revealed itself to be a sheet that owed its structure to a massive pile of trash bags, tightly tied shut.

Peter covered his face with his palm, trying not to laugh. He had fought the same urge to belatedly tidy up and impress, but beyond tossing the trash and shoving things into drawers, there wasn’t much more he could do in a cookie cutter dorm built in the seventies. He cut himself some slack now, but he remembered visiting the laundry room that night in despair, wondering why someone like Deadpool would waste his time around trash people like Peter.

Every time Peter thought they couldn’t possibly be any more different, Wade pulled something like this.

Still amused, Peter looked up to the kitchen. Wade was there, half-dancing in threadbare boxers and a frilly Golden Girls apron. He had his mask on too, but only part of the way. Wade didn’t notice Peter at all, as his broad, scarred back was fully to him, but it was clear he was trying not to wake him. He had music playing on the lowest setting. Although he was singing along with it, his voice wasn’t higher than a whisper, and he handled his skillet with exaggerated care. It was clear Wade was in a very, very good mood.

Peter made his way over, stopping just short of entering the kitchen area. Instead, he leaned against a wall and fondly watched Wade in silence as he made his last perfectly golden pancake, flipping it on top of a towering plate of similarly perfect creations. Wade turned off the fire, hooked his palm underneath the plate, and spun around to add it to the already heavily populated table of breakfast foods behind him.

He yelped when he saw Peter, juggling the plate haphazardly before he practically threw it down on the surface, causing the tower to slide to the left sadly. Freed, Wade staggered backwards, dramatically pressing a hand against his chest. “Way to give a guy a heart attack, Petey.”

“Sorry,” Peter said, not sorry. And, because he was a brat, he said, “Been busy this morning?”

Wade’s eyes shot to his instantly. Caught red handed, he nevertheless tried to play it cool. “I made breakfast!” he announced, like Peter hadn’t seen the table. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I made… um. All of it.”

_ All of it _ was a decent summary of the spread in front of him. There were pancakes, eggs, bacon, and toast, but there was also salsa, latkes, fritters, breakfast tacos, waffles, and some sort of casserole… thing. There was even a gallon of milk with a bowl right by it—and was that a Spider-Man branded cereal? Peter picked it up distractedly. 

“Nothing like waking up to the smell of bacon, am I right?” Wade said, sounding smug.

Peter’s eyes moved from the cereal to Wade. “Or bleach.”

Wade was sweating again. “Uh, about that… Would you believe that my apartment always looks like this?”

Peter shot him a patient look. “Sure.” On cue, part of the half-dried patch job on the wall fell off, thumping into carpet wetly.

Wade fiddled with the plate in front of him. “Then you’ll totally believe there was totally a bleach big rig spill right outside of my apartment-”

“Well, I hope the bleach big rig didn’t run into an ammonia big rig,” Peter said gravely, putting the cereal down.

Wade looked outraged. “I would never-” He paused, registering the expression on Peter’s face. Then he puffed out his cheeks, pouting.

And the sight of that was enough to break Peter. He lost all control over the smile he’d been suppressing all morning. He muffled a snicker against his knuckles, his eyes starting to water. On the heels of his mirth was a burst of warmth and affection that he couldn’t quite push down. He’d just woken up, but this morning was already too much. The rush to clean up. The breakfast feast fit for a family of twelve. The struggle to make a good impression.

All that combined with the conversation they had last night made Peter feel… appreciated. Good. Delighted.  _ Noticed. _

Hands down, this was the best experience he’d ever had after a night with someone. And so, in typical Parker fashion, he immediately tried to ruin it.

“I read the dossier that the Central Hero Agency has on you.”

Wade stilled. His growing smile fell off his face. Then clearing his throat, he untied his apron, keeping his hands busy with it. “Uh. When?”

Wade reached out and turned off his music. The apartment was so quiet now. The only noise left was the fan and Peter’s own rapid-fire heartbeat. He wanted to grab the truth, wring it by its neck, then punch it back into his mouth, never to be heard. Peter was feeling nauseated now, and, worse, Wade wasn’t looking at him, too busy staring at the floor or his hands.

“Right after we met.”

“I- oh.” There was a brief flash of Wade’s eyes, rising and meeting his before darting away. “Um.” He whirled around, suddenly opening and closing the cupboards in quick, darting movements. There were a lot of things in those shelves that ought not to be in kitchens—gasoline, ammo boxes, lye, and what looked like spy equipment with a radar dish—but Wade didn’t seem to be finding what he was looking for.

It wasn’t until he opened up the fridge that he made a little ‘ah ha’ noise. He pulled out, of all things, a thick manila folder covered with frost. He turned back to Peter with a tight, small smile, dropping the folder in between a quiche and a plate full of French bread. When Peter just looked at it, watching crystalized ice slowly melt and soak the folder, Wade gestured at him to take it.

Confused, Peter reached out and picked it up. Looking back at Wade one more time, he slowly opened the folder. He almost dropped it immediately.

His own face was staring back at him, frozen in the awkward smile he had to share with people every time he used his student ID. His chemical-induced headache sharpened into a spike, and his throat was suddenly extremely dry. 

But curiosity won over anxiety, and he found himself flipping through the papers in the folder. His stomach clenched a little more the deeper he dived. There was so much information about him in here. Birth certificates. Family history. Friend lists. Professional and personal affiliations. Credit scores. Past romantic relationships. Even his most recent transcript was in there. 

“…Why do you have this?” Peter asked very carefully.

“You’ve read my dossier, haven’t you? You know why.” Wade leaned back on the counter, crossing his arms over his bare chest. He should have looked vulnerable like that, but he didn’t. The way he held his shoulders and stood his ground would have reminded anyone looking in that Deadpool’s first weapon was his own body.

But all Peter saw in that moment was distance, like Wade’s folded arms had become a metaphorical wall in a space where they’d been mingling so peacefully. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that mingling right now, with his hands full of proof that his privacy had been violated. But he regretted bringing them to this point. He just didn’t know what he regretted—admitting to his own misdeeds that morning, reading the dossier at all, or following Wade home yesterday.

“I’m numero uno on a lot of people’s Top Five Beefcakes I’d Like to Kill,” Wade said. “I sort of… demolished the backbone of a major international crime syndicate? I’m sure that was covered in my file. Lots of people want me dead. And although America manifest destiny’d my Canadian ass years ago, I still attract a lot of people who want to mount me on a wall. And not in a fun way.”

Peter knew this, just as he knew there was a piece he was missing. But his attention dragged back to the folder regardless. He was almost fascinated by how thoroughly his life had been ripped open and summarized. There were even notes in this—private notes lifted off of medical files. Official documents yanked from his original Quirk assessment. Internal memos passed between ESU teachers about him. There were photos too.

But no matter how far Peter flipped through the pages, there was absolutely nothing on Spider-Man. Not even a sliver of a hint.

Peter was strangely disappointed.

“No one has found a way to permanently off me,” Wade continued, “but, hey, why give them a chance to try? Especially now when I’m surrounded by people I like, people I want to protect.” He loosened one of his arms to point a finger at the file. “So, when anyone cozies up to me or gives me anything in the slightest of ways—friendly eye contact, a pat on the back-”

“Or a selfie for a selfie,” Peter interrupted.

There was the missing piece, wasn’t it? Peter had been an unknown. A threat. No wonder Wade had kept him at arm’s length for so long. Was the file in his hand the real reason Wade started opening up?

“…Right,” Wade said, softer. “A selfie for a selfie.” There was regret in his tone, enough to pull Peter’s eyes up and off his file again. “If anyone shows me any sort of kindness, I dig into them to make sure that, if I let them in my life in any sort of way…” He paused.

“It won’t end up hurting anyone you care about,” Peter finished.

“Exactly.” Wade stared at him for a long moment before pushing off the counter. He looked so hopeful. “So. Even stevens?” He even offered a handshake.

It hung there over the table for a while. It took Peter too long to understand what he meant, and, when he did, he put the folder back on the table. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t make us even.”

Wade looked defeated. “Oh.” His hand dropped loosely back to his side. He rocked back on his heels and tugged on his mask where it was sitting on his nose, as if tempted to pull it lower.

Peter wasn’t explaining this well.

“You at least had a good reason for it. I didn’t.” Peter struggled to find the right words here. “I just… wanted to know?”

This seemed to clear up nothing. At the very least, though, Wade seemed less stressed at this explanation. Confused, but less stressed. “Isn’t that normal, though? Are you or are you not a part of the generation that Googles everyone they meet?”

His arms were crossed over his chest again, but it didn’t feel so much like distance now. He was leaning forward, his eyes fixated on Peter’s face. He was acting like he wanted to crawl into Peter’s head and figure out what he was thinking. Peter wished that was Wade’s Quirk, if only to spare him the difficulty of trying to explain why reading a classified file on a Pro Hero was different than commissioning a simple—but worryingly thorough—background check on someone you thought might be an international assassin. Peter dithered.

Before he could say anything, Wade followed up his question with, “And how did you get access to an official file on me anyway?” He waved his hand. “Wait, don’t answer that. Plausible deniability-”

Wade was relaxed again. He was joking. His tone was light and impish, and it only served to make Peter feel more distraught and wrong footed. It wasn’t right.

“I violated your  _ trust _ ,” he blurted out, sure this would make Wade understand.

Wade gestured at the folder, at the cooling breakfast. “And I didn’t violate yours?”

Peter didn’t like being investigated so thoroughly, but… Wade was responding to a threat. A credible threat. One with heavy precedence and heartache attached. That Peter was mostly harmless was inconsequential.

Peter, on the other hand, had been  _ snooping _ . Still was snooping, given the fact that he was trying to figure out what Wade was doing with Eddie Brock. He said as much without name dropping the ex-reporter, which confused Wade further. “A threat is a threat, Petey. And I  _ am _ threatening-”

“I trust you,” Peter said stubbornly. “You’re my boyfriend.”

But Wade already was shaking his head. “I’m sorry I have to be the one who tells you this, but trust is not an entitlement. It’s not something you cash out with after reaching a certain relationship status on Facebook. It’s a  _ gift _ , one that has to be earned over and over and over again-”

Peter’s ears were extremely hot. “And you’re saying that because you haven’t earned mine… or because I haven’t earned yours?”

Wade sighed, looking up at the ceiling. He said nothing for a while, leaning hard on the pause button for this conversation. The silence dragged Peter out of his head and back into his body. He was aware suddenly of the weakness of his knees and the vibration in his limbs. He’d do anything to escape this conversation, but he was afraid that, if he left, the connection they were trying to build together would be irrevocably snapped.

It was so typical of him, though. Peter Parker, unable to hack even a full weekend with the man he was interested in. Peter stewed in his misery.

“…No one will ever have my trust,” Wade said eventually, regretfully. “Not a hundred percent of it, anyway. And that has to do with me and my life choices. As for you…” He dragged his gaze away from the ceiling, dropping it on Peter like a weight. “If I had a hundred percent of your trust, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, would we?”

Peter immediately stared at his feet. Wade wasn’t wrong. The dossier would have come up a lot sooner if Peter trusted Wade. They would have talked about it. He probably wouldn’t have started following Eddie Brock around either. He would have left that stone unturned for sure. And, you know, Wade would probably know about Spider-Man by now too.

Wade had really hit the nail on the head with this one. But, little did he know, Peter trusted no one at all. It was a lonely place to be and a horrible hill to die on.

Wade abruptly sat down at the table in front of the bounty of all of his hard work this morning. The white eyes of his mask narrowed at Peter in a challenge. He steepled his fingers together briefly, as if working out a strategy to the thorny problem Peter was posing, and Peter wished, just briefly, that he was a normal, simple kind of guy who didn’t make the kinds of choices he made.

“You got two choices, Peter,” he said. “You can stand there while I tell you that I expected differently from you. That I’m going to stay awake at night because of this, thinking of all the horrible things you know about me now that I never planned on sharing. Or…” Wade kicked the other chair out from the table. It was mismatched to the table, quite possibly even new. “You can sit down, eat breakfast with me, and talk about what we’re going to do this weekend.”

The reframing of their stalemate was abrupt—and on brand for Wade. Nevertheless, Peter was stumped at these choices. That feeling must have written itself all over his face because Wade smiled. He reached out, palm extended until Peter gradually settled his fingertips along it. His hand closed around Peter, squeezing gently.

“There’s no right answer. Just… choose whatever you need to get through this.” His gaze was steady. “Because no matter what hairs you’re splitting here, it doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

After a beat, Wade let go of his fingers, letting Peter stand alone at the other end of the table. He waited—and he would have to. Because, ever the indecisive one, Peter was frozen in place. One choice was full of the consequences that he expected, that he deserved. His guilt said it was the right one. Wade  _ should  _ be disappointed in him. And yet…

The other choice was more appealing in every way, shape, and form—and not just for him. Wade said there were no right answers, but he’d wanted to end this earlier. It was Peter who dragged it out, demanding repercussions. Wade just wanted to have a good morning.

And that… settled it. Didn’t it?

Wade let out a low relieved breath when Peter finally moved. Then he choked when Peter bypassed the chair to sit in his lap instead. He slung his leg over Wade’s thighs and wrapped his arms around Wade’s neck, trying to express his apologies in every way but verbally. Wade adapted quickly, shifting under Peter to take his weight more evenly and pressing a hand to his lower back. Peter hooked his chin over Wade’s shoulder, pressing a kiss to the naked skin there. Wade shivered and relaxed. Peter could feel him gulp. He could feel the way he sucked a breath right before tugging Peter ever so slightly closer.

Asking for forgiveness instead of a punishment had been a good choice. For the both of them. And how did Peter know that? For starters, Wade’s sense of humor was instantly back in full swing. 

“This is the gentlest backstabbing I’ve ever had.” Unamused, Peter thumped him on the shoulder. Then he pulled away to grimace at Wade, nose to nose. Visibly delighted, Wade just wheezed. He had a cheek-to-cheek grin on his face that eased in stages to something a little quieter, but no less pleased. “Have any more secrets weighing on you?”

Of course he did. Peter tensed up, weighing on which secret to tell first. But when he opened his mouth, heart heavy, Wade closed it, pushing his lip up with a finger.

“I meant what I said about trust, Petey,” he said seriously. “It should be earned, not given… and I’m so gonna earn it from you. I’m gonna earn it so good.” He threaded his fingers together behind his back, smiling. “And when I’ve earned it, there’s not going to be a single secret left between those ears of yours. They will all be mine.”

Peter absorbed that for a bit. Then he started playing with Wade’s earlobes. “Are you sure you want everything?” he asked, leaning into the teasing atmosphere. “A few of them are… quite shocking.”

Wade pretended to give it some thought. “You can keep one or two,” he allowed graciously. “Leave a bit of mystery.” Peter snorted, looking away. A hand on his jaw brought him right back. “And, in return… just… ask me anything. I’ve read a few Central Hero Agency dossiers in my life, and they’re very… light on deets. So… if there’s something you want to know about me, go to the source material? I’ll set you straight.”

Peter didn’t pretend to understand Wade. Hell, much of his problems recently stemmed from his very real lack of comprehension of the man in front of him. But this request—this condition—seemed difficult for Wade to share. He was biting his lip slightly, and, when Peter pushed his mask up the rest of his face, he could see that Wade’s eyes were filled with worry.

So he said, as gently as he could, “Thank you.” He settled his fingers on Wade’s wrist, keeping his hand where it was, still cupping his jaw. They gazed at each other for a few beats longer before Peter regretfully wrinkled his nose.

“I know you might have penciled in weekend long debauchery, but if I have to smell bleach for much longer, my eyeballs might melt out of my skull.”

Wade was already nodding. “Me too. Who knew you need to dilute that shit?” His eyes widened. “I mean, what a freak accident.”

Peter snorted. “Stupid.” But he was smiling.

Wade poked his ribs. Peter pinched Wade’s nose closed. Wade flailed, pretending to suffocate.

They were going to be alright. For now.

-

Peter had pissed off the Maggia exactly once when he was younger. Fortunately for him, Hammerhead soon got put away in prison on a whole slew of unrelated charges. This put his goals of smashing, demasking, and murdering one wily teenage Spider-Man way at the bottom of his list of priorities, which was great.

This meant that Peter never had that heart stopping and deeply formative experience of having a menacing, unmarked black limo pull up on him right outside of campus.

At least, not until today.

It was a mess that required at least thirty minutes to clear up. It didn’t help that the man driving the car stopped a bunch of times to yell at the people honking at him for stopping in a non-loading zone, nor did it help that the same man yelled at him when Peter unwisely told him of the impression he gave off.

“You think I’m the mob? What the hell is wrong with kids these days?” Happy Hogan didn’t appreciate the comparison. “And what are you, blind? This ain’t a limo.”

Peter knew of Happy Hogan. Vaguely. He was a footnote in many pieces covering Tony Stark dating back to the eighties. He was a bulky ex-boxer and current Head of Security for Tony Stark. He was also Quirkless, which, unfortunately, inspired ridicule in this Quirk-fixated world of theirs. Even if the most famous sidekick in the world needed security, why would that security be so powerless?

But Happy hustled, and Peter, dragged along with the force of his personality, was forced to comply. That wasn’t a feat just anyone could boast. Feeling as if his very soul had been abraded, Peter meekly got in the back seat of the not-limo and buckled up.

As he pulled into traffic, Happy gave off the vibe of a puffy, satisfied rooster who’d won a battle—but was ready to find another one. Given that they had at least a forty-five minute drive to Avengers Tower (!), it seemed like he thought Peter was going to be it.

“Where have you been, huh?” Happy barked. “I’ve been looking for you all weekend. No one knew where you were or what you were up to.” Thinking about Wade, Peter turned red. Sensing blood in the water, Happy shifted gears, suddenly smug. “Ah, a girl then. She cute?”

“Not a girl,” Peter muttered.

“Oh. Uh.” Happy visibly recalculated. “Still didn’t answer my question, kid.” Peter met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, and Happy shrugged obstinately. “Guys can be cute. Or, you know, non-binary folks. Singular or plural or whatever.” He was clearly trying to be inclusive.

Peter thought about it. Then he smiled privately. “…He’s very cute.”

“There you go.” Happy seemed to relax a little, like he’d dodged a minefield. “Hey, so what’s with you and Tony, huh? Most of you aspiring Hero types would surrender your left nut just to talk with him, but you, he has to chase after. Why are you ignoring him?”

Peter was planning on coasting all the way to graduation without untangling the thorny mess that Iron Man had dropped on his lap. In fact, he’d planned on coasting without making much of a decision about anything, especially now that Tony Stark was unlikely to follow through with his blanket promise to buy people out of their contracts. For a guy who was quick to help—or even push—people out of a Pro Hero career, he was strangely fixated on Peter’s future as one. Or so his semi-frequent texts since seemed to imply. (Peter may have blocked him.)

Peter wanted to do good, but he wasn’t sure if going pro was the way to do it. But for Stark, remaining a vigilante was a nonstarter conversation. Tony wanted him to embrace the legitimacy of being a Pro Hero, to be the change that the world needed, to fix the society that assigned value to people over the strength and type of their Quirks.

Personally, Peter felt Tony thought too highly of him and his ability—or, perhaps, not enough of the uphill battle that it would be to dismantle half a century’s worth of prejudice and back alley dealing. It wasn’t like America succeeded at dismantling any other kind of prejudice that knocked at their front door…

“Maybe if you’d answer his calls more often,” Happy opined needlessly, “he wouldn’t send me to pick your ass up.”

The rest of their conversation was like that. Interrupting occasionally to yell at other drivers, Happy poked and prodded at Peter, blatantly trying to pull information out of him. Peter didn’t see the point. Happy was Tony’s head of security. He probably had a file on Peter that was twice the size of Wade’s. So, instead, Peter turned the questions back on him, peppering him with questions about kids (if he had any), significant others (if there were any), and weekend activities (if he had time to spare while on his wild goose chase). It was enough to fluster and frustrate Mr. Hogan, such that, when they finally got to the tower, he wasted no time in pushing Peter through the front lobby doors where his polished shoes echoed loudly every time they hit the marble ground.

The street level floor of the tower mirrored the lobbies of most other agencies—or, at least, agencies that could afford most or all of a building. There were several elevators, a wide reception area with no less than five staff, and a small gift shop/museum. The seating area was covered with plaques, awards, and medals. There was even a wooden Hulk with a face cut out outside of the kid area. A family of four in season-inappropriate clothes surrounded it, taking a hundred photos of the grinning child who had shoved his face through the hole.

Aside from them and a handful of others, though, the lobby was nearly empty—a slow day, Peter imagined. So no one reacted when a man in slacks and an AC/DC shirt turned away from the reception area. With his hair left unstyled and his sleeves shoved up to his elbows, Tony Stark didn’t look himself. Or rather, he looked entirely himself, just relaxed. Next to his sardonically arched eyebrow was even a smear of engine grease.

Happy made a beeline towards his boss. He paused about ten feet away and said, “Mr. Stark, if I may present… the kid.”

Tony looked as unimpressed as Peter felt. Peter nearly faked a curtsy before remembering, at last minute, that Aunt May would kill him. So he rubbed the back of his neck instead and kept walking until it was within arms reach of the only man in the world who could out Spider-Man. “Uh, hey.”

Tony wasn’t feeling charitable. “Uh, hey,” he echoed in a whiny voice before turning to Happy. “Who’s this again? Surely I’d recognize someone who has been keeping me up to date on his life  _ like I asked _ -”

Peter was annoyed. “I-”

But Happy interrupted, rapping his knuckles on Peter’s chest. “Isn’t this the kid?” he said sharply. He didn’t wait for Tony to answer, rapidly stating, “This has to be the kid. You gave me a picture of the kid. I gave up my weekend for the kid.  _ This has to be the kid _ -”

“Relax,” Tony said. “This is the kid. You did good. Uh, have a treat.” He gestured vaguely at a bowl on the counter of brightly colored candy.

“I’m not your dog, Tony,” Happy said doggedly. “You wake me up at 3am for this, you better have something better to offer than some damn discount store reception candy.” Happy paused, then he turned to the closest staff at the reception table. “No offense.”

The woman held eye contact with Happy before pointedly standing up and walking away.

Happy hesitated, then whipped back to his boss, hissing. “This is not in my job description, Tony!”

“Pretty sure there’s a line in there somewhere that says  _ other duties as assigned _ -” Tony cut himself off, reading something in Happy’s face that made him throw up his hands in defense. “Look. JARVIS—make sure Happy has temporary access to my expense accounts. He’s going on an extended lunch break.”

Happy paused at that. “Yeah?” He squinted. “Wherever I want to go?”

“Wherever,” Tony promised.

“That little hole in the wall in Maui? With the chips?” Happy challenged.

“Give my pilot at least a thirty-minute heads up, and he’ll take you straight to Hawaii.” When Happy stilled, considering that, Tony stretched out his arms, as if to say, how about it? Neither of them thought this was out of the range of possibility—which was  _ wild _ .

“So, this is how the other half lives,” Peter muttered. He already had a headache.

Both men’s gazes slid away from each other and back to Peter.

“The kid. How does he get back to school when he’s done with you?” Happy asked, shifting gears. “I’m not abandoning a kid in the middle of Manhattan, Tony.”

“Don’t worry about it. Besides, I’m sure he’ll  _ swing _ a way home,” Tony said, shooting Peter an arch look. At the blatant dig, Peter scowled at him, but otherwise said nothing, avoiding Happy’s searching gaze.

Worries thus expunged, Happy left a few moments later, a slight pep to his step. Rolling his eyes, Tony leaned over the counter and gave the receptionist a few directives. Peter was soon handed a special visitor’s badge, still warm from the printer.

“Let’s get this over with,” Peter whispered to himself, clipping it on the front of his shirt. The receptionist heard him, and her smile crinkled at the edges sympathetically. Great. He was a forty minute drive away from campus, and he still couldn’t escape the feeling of being a student called to the principal’s office.

“Charming,” Tony commented, but quickly let it go. He spun once at the edge of the counter, a surface he’d barely stepped ten feet from since they arrived. Then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the middle elevator. “Head on up. 27 th floor. You’ll be let in all the right places. Don’t worry about getting lost.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter said slowly. Then, lacking inspiration for the words that came next, he said, simply, “What am I doing here?”

Tony paused, looking at him. For a second, he seemed sad—for Peter, weirdly enough. Then he shook his head. “There are some people I want you to meet. Some connections you should have before you hit the ground running with that Pro Hero license.”

A vein in Peter’s head throbbed. “Hey now,” he started to say, about to remind Tony that the license he spoke of wasn’t a guaranteed thing.

But before he could say much more, Tony reached out to nothing at all and vanished in a blink of an eye.

Peter jumped. Then, stupidly, he looked left and right and even behind the reception counter before he registered eyes on him. He looked up, blushing.

“You get used to it,” the receptionist confided, smiling. “Mr. Stark is on the cutting edge of everything, after all!”

Even holograms, it seemed. Peter eyed a small disk on the floor where the light had emerged. “You don’t say.”

-

An elevator was an elevator, no matter how fancy your Pro Hero agency’s tower was. That was what Peter told himself anyway, folding his arms behind his back as the elevator car climbed higher in the building. His fingers twitched every time the walls shimmered with a reminder that it could be tapped, changed, or swapped out with views of a different vista. His feet kept bracing for a feeling of ascension that wouldn’t come, and his gaze darted away from the corners, which had somehow been obscured with a trick of the light.

It was just so…  _ awesome _ . More awesome than any elevator should be! Even the background music was cool—and everyone knew elevator music was bad. But if Tony was trying to lure him into choosing a Pro Hero lifestyle with a tour of the building, he was failing. Most Pro Hero agencies without a billionaire in the wings were frugal. The Avenger experience was not standard. Not at all.

…It was still super cool, though.

He’d just reached the fifth floor when part of the wall parted. He snatched his hand away from it, tucking it back behind him again as James Rhodes Jr. himself entered the elevator. Peter tried to exude innocence, even boredom. He wasn’t sure how much he succeeded.

Rhodes eyed him for a moment before tapping something on the wall himself. The doors closed smoothly, and the walls around them shifted from swirly opaque glass to the metal interior of a stereotypical elevator. Peter was both relieved and disappointed. Curious, he looked at Rhodes, a nonverbal question that even Iron Man himself apparently couldn’t ignore.

“Trust Tony to program the only thing that gives me motion sickness,” Rhodes said as an explanation. His tone was strained but also joking. Peter smiled automatically, and they both turned, eyes front and center.

It was awkward.

Besides the music, the car was silent, and remained so for five more floors. Peter kept his chin up, eyes on the changing floor numbers, aware that next to him, Rhodes’ casual stance was getting more and more tense the higher they went up. Sweating slightly, Peter thought of—and discarded—at least five different things he could do to break the ice. He was relieved when Rhodes broke first. Less so when he realized where this was going.

“JARVIS, the scenic route, please.”

Peter shot him a look, worried about what ‘scenic’ meant in an elevator that was supposed to go up and down. The comforting display of those floor numbers disappeared, leaving Peter with nothing to look at but Rhodes himself, who was turning and facing him. Peter mimicked him out of sheer self-preservation, swallowing under the steady gaze of the seasoned Pro Hero.

“So. You’re the one who knows about Iron Man, huh?”

Peter’s eyes flew wide open. Rhodes knew. Rhodes knew what Tony knew, which was that Peter knew what he shouldn’t have known! And Peter  _ should _ have known that Rhodes would know, because what kind of friend/co-conspirator would Tony Stark be if he didn’t make sure Rhodes knew what Tony knew, which was that Peter  _ knew _ -

Wait. What?

“Yes sir,” Peter said belatedly, trying to untangle the knot of his own thoughts.

And while he did that, Rhodes, frowning heavily, looked at him from head to foot as if to assess him. He’d never felt so scrutinized in his life. Peter fought the urge to fix his posture, smooth down his hair, or even check his jeans to make sure he’d fully zipped up. 

“Hm.” Rhodes reached into his leather jacket, pulling out a checkbook. “Fine. What’s it going to take?”

“Oh,” Peter said, relieved, thinking he understood. He lifted both hands, waving them in a warding off gesture. “Don’t worry, sir, I already had this conversation with Mr. Stark-” He wasn’t a blackmailer, and he hadn’t accepted anything. If anything, Tony blackmailed  _ him _ . Sort of.

“I sincerely doubt Tony would offer you a blank check not to keep your mouth shut. So. What’s it gonna be?”

“You see-” Peter started to say, ready to explain the checks and balances of their agreement. Then it clicked. “ _ Not _ to keep my silence?” Rhodes gazed at him steadily. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s there not to understand? I may not have the pockets he has, but I was a colonel, you know, and being an Avenger isn’t a charity operation.” Peter slowly shook his head, backing up half a step. Rhodes sighed. “Think of it this way….  _ You can make double the paycheck _ . One paycheck from me, one paycheck from the greediest paparazzi you can find. I have a couple of suggestions too.” Rhodes shrugged. “SHIELD won’t like you mouthing off—SHIELD’s the one who deals with Pro Hero shenanigans, by the way—but that won’t stop them from placing you in a witness protection program. Not that you’d need one, in my opinion. Tony talks a good talk, but he doesn’t have the endurance—or the heart—for a long-term revenge campaign. Of course, your Pro Hero aspirations would be dead on arrival-”

“Stop,” Peter interrupted, horrified at the future Rhodes was laying out in front of him. What it meant for him. What it meant for Tony, for the Avengers. Why was Rhodes doing this to him?

“I’m just laying out some options.”

Peter’s temper flared. “Well, put them back,” he snapped bitterly, his hands fisting at his sides. “I can’t. I won’t. I won’t do anything that jeopardizes you guys, or the Avengers. No matter what’s in it for me. No matter what’s at stake!”

Peter’s words echoed in the elevator like an indictment. His heart felt like it was racing a million miles an hour, and the space was abruptly too small. He was cornered in the worst of ways, and his fight or flight instincts were surging. He had no idea why this was happening, or how this would conclude.

But before he could start churning out conspiracy theories, Rhodes’ stony face finally fell. He looked down, nodding once. “Yeah. I was afraid of that.” He pocketed his checkbook and turned back to the elevator, hands clasped loosely in front of him.

Peter hesitated, then did the same. A full minute passed, both of them staring at the shiny metal door. Peter should have landed at his floor ages ago, he realized. He wasn’t getting out of here until Rhodes let him leave. He snuck a glance at the Pro Hero under his lashes, but Rhodes seemed stumped, like he was at a loss of words.

He found them eventually. “When Tony told me somebody finally found us out, I was relieved,” Rhodes admitted. Then he laughed once, a sad sound. “Ten years of lying to people… it weighs on you.” His eyes darted to Peter. “But you’d know all about that.”

Peter relaxed in fractions, mind turning over everything he’d learned in the last ten minutes. Tony wanted the dual identity of Iron Man kept safe. And Rhodes did not.

“Have you… tried talking to Mr. Stark about this?” Peter offered hesitantly. “I’m sure if he knew…” Peter trailed off, not sure what to say. All he knew was that, on that fateful day, Tony had seemed more bothered about exposing Rhodes than he’d been about being exposed himself.

Rhodes huffed out a breath. “Only about once a week every week for the last ten years,” he said in a tone full of irony. “It seems stupid, right? I’m not a fake Avenger. Hell, I’ve been on more assignments and calls than Tony has. I own the Iron Man persona as much as he does. I could call a press conference at any moment and air it all out. Let the chips fall where they may.” He paused, then grimaced a little. “But Tony and I… we’ve mapped out every possible reaction to the truth, and most of the outcomes are… bad. For us. For the Avengers. But the longer we wait…” Rhodes stopped. He dropped his head, shaking it.

And, for a moment, Peter completely understood. Fear was just as much of a paralytic as it was a motivator.

“Why did you decide to pretend you’re Iron Man?” he asked instead.

Rhodes seemed surprised at the tangent. Then thoughtful. “I was mad, mostly. Mad at the military for dropping me when my Quirk was destroyed. Mad that they’d panicked and fired a nuke at New York during the Chitari invasion. Furious that Tony had intercepted it, saving millions of lives—and they still would have crucified him for it. For daring to be an unlicensed Hero, for putting himself out there with an allegedly subpar Quirk during Earth’s worst hours.” Grimacing, he flapped a hand. “Plus, there was the fact that Tony was already in hot water with SHIELD for the last time he’d hopped into his own invention…”

“I never heard about that.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Rhodes said tolerantly. “SHIELD is very, very good at its job.” He waited, then spoke again. “I should’ve said ‘no’. I know that now. Anger doesn’t nourish or sustain. It eats away at you. Blinds you. Keeps you from noticing the important things around you. Factual things.”

“Like what?” Peter asked.

“Like the fact that people like Tony always land on their feet,” Rhodes said frankly, looking at him again. “They would have swarmed him. Politicians. The media. Civilians. Lots of bad faith arguments would have flown around. Bad takes. Frivolous lawsuits. And Osborn would have been  _ hell _ to deal with, for sure. Tony was outed as an unlicensed Hero Support for what he said he did to get the suit out there for me, and Osborn immediately recommended federal prison! If he knew who was actually piloting the suit during the invasion, oh boy…” Rhodes shook his head, visibly stunned by the alternate turn of events he was imagining.

Peter could take a guess at what would have gone down. Norman had taken a casual potshot at Peter for his insolence over Uncle Ben’s death, and Peter wasn’t even remotely a threat back then. If Tony had come out as Iron Man right under his nose, Norman would have freaked out. Because Tony Stark was a true threat in every way—politically, psychologically, economically… Norman would have never forgiven him for it.

“But if I said ‘no’, at the end of day? Tony would have landed on his feet like he always does,” Rhodes said with confidence. “Like he will when we go public in the future. Tony will always be alright.”

Peter believed him. But… “Then why was he so quick to bribe me for my silence?”

“We don’t know how the truth is going to come out,” Rhodes said bluntly. “Or what the immediate repercussions are going to be. We can plan for them every way we can, but until someone snitches to the wrong person, we don’t know how this is going to play out.” He turned and faced Peter again. “Which is why I hoped you were going to force the issue. At least then, I thought, it was finally happening. At least then, we could deal with it. Rather than thinking and worrying about what could happen instead.”

Peter knew how that felt. Agonizing and fixating over possibilities was exhausting. He thought about introducing Rhodes to the concept of analysis paralysis, but there was something that was still bothering him. “But you said Tony always lands on his feet.”

“Yeah.  _ Tony _ ,” Rhodes replied with emphasis. He smiled faintly. It softened his face instantly, making him look more like the friendly Pro Hero Peter grew up watching than the intimidating man with a checkbook he just met on the Avenger’s fancy elevator. “He’s more worried about me, I think. He’s afraid I’m gonna lose the sky again.” At this, he chuckled darkly, sliding his hands in his jacket. He rocked back on his feet, looking up at the elevator doors automatically. “JARVIS, pull us back on track, please.”

JARVIS responded in an affirmative. On his end, Peter didn’t understand. Sensing that their shared journey was coming to an end, he quickly tried to piece it together. “If the truth comes out, you’re going to get in trouble for aiding and abetting Mr. Stark in a lie. For helping a sidekick pretend to be a full Hero. For Pro Hero fraud.”

“Yup,” Rhodes said with a nod. “But that’s not everything.” He looked at Peter with a sly smirk. “You think the public is going to shit a brick about Tony? Wait until they hear about me.” His smile grew. “Eighty percent of the world’s population is born with fantastic abilities. Twenty percent are not and are thus known as the Quirkless.”

Peter knew that. Everyone knew that.

But Rhodes wasn’t done. He leaned towards Peter, eyes gleaming with suppressed amusement. “The only roles that the Quirkless have in this Pro Hero Society of ours is civilian or victim.” Rhodes lifted a finger to his lips. “And Tony’s been pulling sleight of hand tricks for the last decade to keep people from figuring out that  _ I’m still Quirkless. _ ”

The elevator doors opened three floors shy of Peter’s destination. Rhodes walked out.

“Wait,” Peter called out, stumbling over his sentences. “Wait wait- I heard- I thought it came back?”

Rhodes turned halfway, still smiling. “Nice to meet you, Peter Parker. Sorry for pressuring you. You’re a good kid.”

The doors closed between them before Peter could get another word in, blocking Rhodes from view. The car moved upward again, and Peter staggered back a step, stunned.

A Quirkless Iron Man. This entire time. Wow.

But Rhodes was right. If the world wasn’t ready to see sidekicks as real Heroes, they definitely weren’t ready for the Quirkless.

Peter let that depressing thought sink in. Then, a moment later, he punched the air, excitement breaking through the darkness.  _ A secret Quirkless superhero. _ Man, why the hell were Avengers so damn cool?!

-

Peter didn’t really have time to pack in his delight before the elevator stopped at his intended floor. It didn’t help when the doors opened on a waiting, frowning Tony Stark when Peter’s first instinct was to smile. And he did so, broadly.

Tony’s frown deepened. “Wasn’t aware one of the features of my elevator was an attitude adjustment,” he said suspiciously. “That was an awfully long trip too. What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” Peter said peacefully. “Just decided that you weren’t going to ruin my day.”

_ Secret Quirkless superhero _ , Peter thought again, and he beamed. Tony looked even more disgruntled at this. Peter could hear voices in the distance.

So could Tony, it seemed. He turned halfway, looking towards the source. Then he looked back at Peter, his eyebrows knitted together. “…So be it,” he said, letting it go. He gestured with his head and started walking, and Peter followed him quickly.

This floor was markedly different from the lobby. Less opulent, it was nevertheless still spacious and way above Peter’s pay grade as a vigilante. Wood floors made echoes out of their footsteps, and the late morning sun peered in through tinted ceiling-to-floor windows. The hallway they came from opened into a seating area dotted with couches, televisions, and a robust kitchen.

About midway, sitting at a square table, were none other than Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

They seemed to be engaged in a private conversation. Three empty plates sat in front of them. Bucky Barnes was clasping a coffee cup in his metal hand, but he made no moves to drink it. Instead, his pale eyes were fixated on the only true Avenger between them. As for Steve Rogers, Peter had never seen the man more casual than in that very moment. In faded sweatpants and a NASA shirt, he could have been mistaken for a civilian. He was smiling, propping up his chin on one of his fists. His left leg was sprawled, held up by a third chair. Bucky was gripping the back of the same chair with his human hand. His expression was extremely hard to read.

Peter felt like he was interrupting something. Tony, on the other hand, had no such reservations.

“Second breakfast?” Tony called out, grabbing their attention. “What are you, a hobbit?”

His voice immediately snapped whatever spell they had been under. They both jerked.

Bucky was quick with a quip. “He used to be.” His eyes fell immediately to Peter as he straightened up in his chair.

Steve, on the other hand, was pulling out of his slouch, yanking his feet back under him and stacking plates like someone’s fastidious mom had just entered the room and caught him slipping.

So it was Bucky who asked, “Who’s this?”

Tony exchanged a look with Peter. Beyond him, Steve was squinting at Peter with the expression of someone who was trying to put a name to the face.

“Only Empire State University’s most promising future Hero Support,” he said, like that was nothing. Peter instantly felt himself turn red. He could have kicked him. Satisfied, Tony turned back to the two men. “Guys, meet Peter Parker.”

The enthusiasm this introduction got Peter reminded him of a fact he was comfortable forgetting, which was that most Pro Heroes were generally pretty nice. Captain America and the Winter Soldier were no exceptions. Neither man was super effusive, but they both got up and shook his hand, exchanging pleasantries. It was the sort of distanced kindness you’d give a stranger or an unfamiliar relative when you heard of their success—and to them, it  _ was _ a success. It meant something that Tony thought he was the best of everyone in Support Track.

Peter tried to retreat back to Tony. It was a failure. Tony immediately pushed him back to the other two, saying, in an undertone, “Go. Mingle. Ask questions. This is part of mentoring.”

“Mr. Stark-”

“Your fault,” Tony reminded him. “You can’t just come and save a guy’s life and expect to fade into the wallpaper, Peter. You are firmly—and permanently—on my radar. Don’t look so upset. It’ll hurt my feelings.”

Peter ended up joining Steve and Bucky at their table while Tony went back to the kitchen, fiddling with an appliance. Another one poured him coffee automatically in a massive mug that had Rhodes’ face on it. Peter was quite unhappy about this. He preferred to deal with the devil he knew.

Fortunately, Steve and Bucky seemed to have clocked him as shy instead of what he really was—cagey and full of secrets and lies.

They chatted about ESU at first. Unsurprisingly, Steve had never had a chance to lead a workshop or seminar for just Support Track, and he seemed a little bothered when Peter gave him a rundown of their curriculum to try and explain why that was the case.

“Sounds like they’re setting you up to die,” Bucky replied bluntly. Steve elbowed him.

“It’s the state’s curriculum,” Peter said with a shrug, not willing to defend it any further. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that they were being educated more for administrative roles than direct confrontation with villians.

But it also wasn’t like ESU didn’t try to give them a taste of the real world. McCoy was regularly in hot water with the state’s Pro Hero accreditation committees for what deviations he was willing to fight for—the drills, the physical training, the courses he’d made track neutral. Even Support Track’s optional internship had been a source of controversy for the school and its external stakeholder.

Peter knew this only because of MJ and the paper.

“In any case,” Steve said, “There’s no better mentor than Tony. He’s the best Hero Support we’ve ever had.”

Tony dropped the creamer. What an eavesdropper.

“Who else have you had?” Peter asked, curious.

Steve scratched the side of his face. “Uh. Well, we’ve borrowed a few, I guess.”

“Stark is the Avengers’ one and only,” Bucky said.

Steve looked at him, frowning. “I guess.”

“Why is that?” Peter asked. “Do you not like working with Hero Supports?”

“It’s not that,” Steve was quick to assure him. “After some of our wild formative years, the Central Hero Agency decided that they should administer us directly.”

Wild formative years. What a way to summarize the formation of the Avengers. Peter remembered aliens coming in through a wormhole when he was still a child. They were all used to an occasional alien—like Thor—coming through, but the world had been completely unprepared to deal with an invasion. Many Pro Heroes took to the streets to protect citizens against the Chitari ground troops, but it was the newly formed—and aptly named—Avengers who took the fight back to the commanders. It was the Avengers who took them from almost certain death and defeat to victory.

Peter hummed. “So part of their administration efforts is to decide who is part of the Avengers?”

That was troubling. It also wasn’t how any other Pro Hero agency worked. The Central Hero Agency oversaw them all, gave them marching orders, and assigned them broad directives. It did not meddle with the minutiae of running a small hero agency.

The CHA must not trust the Avengers much, Peter realized. He wondered what that meant.

“They have yet to drop any of our members, but we don’t get much say in recruiting. I’ve had to go to bat with them for ages to get some of our new ones. And they’ve been pretty firm about not recruiting anymore Hero Supports,” Steve admitted.

There was a pained look on his face. After a while, Peter realized it was because Steve was trying to let him down gently, assuming that, like most of his peers, he wanted to be an Avenger one day. Peter had honestly never considered it, but now that he knew it wasn’t an option, his contrary heart wanted it. Just a little.

“They say it’s because they want the Avengers to remain an effective strike team,” Steve continued.

“Which is stupid reasoning,” Bucky interjected. He and Steve were looking at each other with the wryness of people who had had this conversation a hundred times over.

Then, as if remembering Peter, Steve turned to him and said, helpfully, “The Howling Commandos were all Quirkless except for Dum Dum Dugan, and Dum Dum was very weakly Quirked by today’s standards.”

Bucky snorted. “Now  _ that _ was the ideal team makeup. One idiot battering ram surrounded by capable soldiers.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, voice heavy with nostalgia. Then he realized who was the battering ram. “ _ Hey _ .”

Bucky wasn’t born with a Quirk. This, Peter remembered suddenly. Thinking of him, of Wade, of Carlton Drake, Peter turned to Bucky, interrupting their banter. “Sir, I wanted to say I really learned a lot listening to your debate a while back.” Bucky frowned in confusion. “The one about Quirk enhancement at ESU?”

Bucky’s expression cleared. “Right. That. Didn’t think anyone was listening to me. That kid Drake’s a great debater. Very… enthusiastic.” He looked down at his coffee. “It’s not like I don’t understand why people support that shit. Do I question people who just want to upgrade their quirk? Sure. Lots of power hungry idiots out there. It’s just… Quirk enhancement therapy rarely happens to benefit individuals. Look at Steve.”

Or Wade, Peter thought privately.

“Why me?” Steve asked.

Bucky rolled his eyes at him. “You didn’t receive therapy because they were trying to help you,” he said, irritated. “You received therapy because the US was trying to develop an army of  _ freaking super soldiers-” _

“Buck,” Steve started to say, his voice heavy.

A metal hand tightened against ceramic, causing it to squeak. “You were one cold breeze away from death. Don’t tell me it was ethical, and don’t tell me your Quirk was needed for the war efforts. It would have been next to  _ useless _ .”

“I beg to differ,” Steve muttered.

Peter felt like he’d interrupted a private conversation again. “Wait, I thought Steve’s original Quirk was peak stamina.”

Bucky’s eyes flicked back to him. After a moment, he looked amused. “And that is one of the many great lies the public school system has shoved down your throat.” Smugly, he turned to Steve. “Steve, want to share what your  _ actual _ Quirk was?”

Steve hesitated, expression souring. “…Perfect memory recall,” he admitted, sounding embarrassed.

“Really?” What a useful Quirk!

Steve didn’t seem to expect to hear Peter sound so chipper about it. He paused, eyeing him, and then said, “Yeah. Great for drawing, not much for anything else,” he said. Despite his rational words, his tone was gloomy. He sighed, shaking himself out of it. “Afterwards, it became a strength Quirk. Necessary at the time with the war, of course, but… I regret losing my original Quirk. The fake one doesn’t fit as well.” He flexed his hand, looking down at it for a moment.

Peter wished Steve and Wade knew each other. Their paths towards Quirk enhancement were nearly identical—soldiers pushed by higher authorities into risky experiments. But where Wade had come out of it with a thirst for vengeance, Steve had not. Then again, there was nothing in any of the history books to indicate that Steve’s enhancement required as much torture as Wade’s did. In that, perhaps Wade’s path mirrored more of Bucky’s experience than Steve’s. Wade also hadn’t lost his original Quirk, making him one of the few people in the world with multiple powers.

Peter heaved out a low breath, looking at his lap. He had so many questions about what happened to Wade. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask them, even though Wade told him to. But he couldn’t help but feel that Wade would benefit from talking to people with shared life experiences. He would never reach out to them, though.

An idea was starting to form. “Maybe more people need to know that. When talking about Quirk enhancement, I mean,” Peter said. He looked up sharply at Steve. “The world knows Bucky’s experience. But what about yours? That might help sway some opinions, or at least make people think before being experimented on.”

Steve paused, palming his hair briefly. “I’ve been advised not to speak to the public until I undergo public relations training.” This was said very delicately. Very carefully.

Bucky slashed through the attempt in seconds. “They don’t trust this punk not to cuss out another sitting member of Congress.” His voice was as dry as the desert.

“Hey, now,” Steve started to say, but stopped. He didn’t have a rebuttal for what seemed to be a factual statement.

When annoyance bled into embarrassment, Bucky laughed at Steve’s expense, and, after a moment, so did Peter. He couldn’t believe how much personal information he was being given, just by virtue of being named Tony’s mentee.

Thinking of him, Peter looked for Tony and found him standing by a counter not very far away. He was drinking out of the mug with Rhodes’ face on it. Peter only knew he was smiling by the crow’s feet crinkling by the edges of his eyes.

It suddenly struck Peter how well Tony was liked by the other Avengers, even as just a Hero Support. Protecting Rhodes from the fallout was probably only part of Tony’s motivation to keep a heavy hand on Peter. Tony likely wanted to protect this too.

Hero Supports were supposed to be back of the line fighters, if they were fighting at all. While it wasn’t necessarily illegal for them to get caught in the middle of a firefight, it was frowned on for them to chase it by themselves. How much would the world freak out to know Tony Stark was also Iron Man? How much would the Avengers? Tony could lose so much if Peter had looser lips.

“Parker here works with his school’s newspaper,” Tony said from his position. Steve and Bucky turned slightly to include him. “Could be a test run for you, Steve. Pierce won’t let you flex your reporter muscles with an adult, then why not with a bunch of kids?”

The problem with that statement was the fact that they were assuming that the college paper was just for fun. In reality, MJ was an extremely serious journalist. They might not have the budget of a professional newspaper, but MJ could give any reporter a run for their money.

However, Peter bit down on his defense. Steve was looking at him with interest, and he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Pretty sure Pierce would hate that,” Bucky said in a tense voice.

But Steve’s focus didn’t waver an inch. “I don’t give a flying fuck what Pierce thinks.” After a pause, he said lightly, “Pardon my French.” He turned to face Peter completely, his eyes gleaming. “Peter. Buddy. Let’s talk.”

Trying not to betray his own eagerness, Peter leaned forward. Thanks to Tony, he was going to have one hell of a pitch for MJ this week. Maybe this was what she needed to move away from the Eddie Brock story once and for all.

-

Steve’s phone number burnt a hole in his pocket for a week before he got the nerve to pull it out again.

That next morning, he delivered his lead to MJ, who spat out her tea and dove for her phone. Steve Rogers was in their office that afternoon, looking like a too large Pro Hero in his slightly ill-fitting civilian clothes. They’d opted to invite him over when the office was free of the usual crowd. Even Beck was nowhere to be seen, but they were already getting some rubberneckers poking their heads in.

Even out of his uniform, Steve Rogers attracted attention.

MJ was visibly struggling, her natural aversion to authority figures warring with her admiration for his work. To Steve’s credit, he was friendly and polite but also blunt in a way that clearly charmed her. Peter took a step back, busying himself at his desk while the two of them got acquainted.

He eavesdropped shamelessly. The longer the two of them talked, the more Peter could see why the Central Hero Agency wanted a muzzle on Steve. He met Peter exactly once and didn’t bother censoring his opinions about things. With MJ, he was even less circumspect—and MJ loved it.

From the safety of his own desk, he stayed put, and right up until Steve started explaining how he met Peter. Then the back of his neck prickled. He looked up to see MJ shooting him a concentrated death stare. Too late, he realized that if she’d been pissed that he knew Spider-Man, she was going to be absolutely livid that he had Tony Stark on speed dial.

Like a coward, Peter drained the rest of his coffee and high tailed it out of there, leaving them to their own conversation.

How contradictory he must have seemed to her. Ready to drop the hero gig so close to graduation, and yet rubbing shoulders with some of the members of the most well-known hero agencies in all of America—if not the world. Students at their college might benefit from a class or seminar or two from such people, but any further attempts to network with them was severely restricted by the administration.

Of all their classmates, Flash would know this restriction the best, as he’d almost been expelled freshman year for following Thor into the parking lot after a packed seminar on  _ Asgard: Truths and Myths. _

He dodged MJ for the rest of the day. After his classes ended, he patrolled for a few hours before calling it a night and swinging in close to where Wade lived. By the time Wade answered his door, greeting him with a kiss, his apartment smelled both pungent and yummy. Peter had barely gotten out a question verifying the standing invite, as he always did, before Wade wordlessly bent his knees. He did it just enough to hook one forearm under Peter’s ass before standing up again, hauling Peter over the threshold all at once in an impressive one arm carry.

That was his answer, he supposed.

The space had much improved from their weekend together, and the bleach stench was nothing but a funny memory. New carpet and new paint were just the start of the improvements Wade had made. An unknowing outsider would never have known that the apartment should have probably been condemned at some point, and that never failed to amuse Peter. Mostly because Wade never failed to subtly show off said improvements while simultaneously pretending they had always been there.

Peter was starting to build up a lot of memories in this apartment. While he cherished many of them, he knew quite a few of them weren’t exactly wholesome or even PG-13. Peter felt a lot of things about Wade—fascination, appreciation, like, respect, interest—but lately, it felt like a whole dimension of feelings were growing and taking precedence.

And that dimension was  _ horny _ .

Peter had never been a person who thought with his dick. Nor was he a person who thought much about sex—who to have it with, when, how many times, etc. He never had fantasies about specific people. Even when he jerked off by himself, his thoughts usually circled around the general idea of touching and being touched. People normally had to hit on him first before he got a clue, and even then he often went with the flow, not able to unclench enough to be there in the moment and fully enjoy the experience. He was always watching exits and listening for threats, a failing he attributed to once dating the daughter of the Vulture. Nothing cut through a guy’s excitement faster than expecting to be murdered at any moment of weakness—and nothing eroded someone’s interest in Peter faster than seeing him unable to relax.

But with Wade, it was different. Peter felt turned on all the time. A hunger had awoken inside of him, and the only thing that would hit the spot was Wade himself.

When Peter’s mind wandered in class, he thought about riding Wade that first night together, his pace nice, slow, and maddening.

When he patrolled, he thought about the time several days later when Wade had forced him chest down on the kitchen table so he could rim Peter into incoherency.

When he was on break, he thought about his revenge, which was to tie Wade up in a chair and whisper in his ear about all the things they could do instead, while using the man’s own fleshlight against him.

When he was alone, he thought about the first time Wade dropped to his knees in front of him, flashing a gorgeous grin up at him before reaching out to slide down Peter’s zipper.

Even now, Peter struggled to focus. He was a mess. A horny, filthy minded mess. He’d be more remorseful about it if Wade didn’t treat it like the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.

The only conclusion Peter could come up with in all of this was that he trusted Wade in ways he trusted no other partner. He trusted Wade with his safety. He trusted Wade with his naked body. He trusted Wade not to trigger his spidey sense.

But he did not trust Wade with his secret identity, and that realization alone was troubling. It made him want to throw something.

But he supposed that was Wade’s point all along. Just because he had one aspect of Peter’s trust didn’t mean he was automatically entitled to the other. He had to earn the other, and he was truly doing his best to. It wasn’t his fault that the idea of demasking in front of Wade inspired a bone deep chill. It wasn’t his fault that Peter’s anxiety about being known, about being seen, was so intense that he tried to will Tony Stark’s knowledge of him out of existence through a combination of avoidance, ghosting, and wishful thinking.

Maybe Spider-Man was a secret of his that Peter would never be able to share. Wade would probably be okay with that. After all, he himself had been blunt about the fact that his own past precluded him from giving one hundred percent of his trust to any one person. But, again, Wade had good reason for being careful. Did Peter?

He wanted to trust Wade so much, but he knew he had his own work to do too. First, he’d destroyed the remaining notes and pieces he had on Wade’s dossier. That wasn’t information he needed to hold on to anymore.

Second, he stopped pursuing Eddie Brock. He stopped following Drake for the same reason. Let them play whatever games they were playing with each other. It had nothing to do with Peter. He might still be in the dark about why Brock was on Wade’s radar, but he could ask now, and Wade would tell him.

(He didn’t ask. He felt like he’d squandered whatever right he had to when he went behind Wade’s back.)

Despite all of these efforts to clean his hands of this, Peter couldn’t quite resist leaning into Betty a little. He had been bothered for a while by her comments about how she’d claimed Wade was ‘convenient’ for the Central Hero Agency. It put an awful pit in his stomach. Half-jokingly, he told her that, if her Quirk dropped her in a CHA server again, she should grab every memo, message, and email that had Wade’s name, his alias, or his agency listed. If they looked at all of them together, they were sure to be able to piece together what the CHA really thought of him.

Peter justified this by telling himself that he wouldn’t keep it a secret. Not this time. He’d promised Wade that he would talk to him about anything he ran into—officially or unofficially—moving forward, and Wade had been really good about that so far. Betty, of course, had seen right through him.

The last thing he was trying to do to earn Wade’s trust was to talk around Spider-Man a little better. Before, he’d lie about scheduling conflicts. Now, he ventured as close as he dared to the truth. If he got in a fight with someone as Spider-Man, then he told Wade he got into a fight. If he was running surveillance on a sketchy situation, he told Wade he was looking into something. If he was trapped behind a fire, he named it. If he was stopping a robbery, he was a witness. So on, so forth.

One of these days, he was going to slip and out himself. That, or Wade was going to put together all the pieces. In either case, Peter hoped he was brave enough to face that conversation head on instead of running away. Because if it happened now, he was bolting, and he didn’t like what that meant for the future of their relationship.

But today was not that day.

Wade set down a plate in front of him, and they ate together in companionable silence in the kitchen. Once they finished, they sat down together in front of the television and turned it on to the local channel. They traded remarks about the day. Wade seemed sleepy. Apparently, his agency had been chasing down rumors of a shark with feet. It had gone nowhere.

“All I want to do is cuddle up with my best boy,” Wade muttered, resting his head on Peter’s shoulder.

Peter’s offer to leave died in his throat. “Let me call him then.”

“…Very funny.”

On top of the smell of the lotion he used on his skin, Peter could also smell butter and garlic from dinner, sweat, and something coppery. It made him want to turn and bite Wade’s pec, so he did. Wade snorted and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. Peter had half a mind to climb on his thigh and see where it took them. It was amazing how quickly a guy’s confidence shot through the roof when they were paired with someone like Wade. He welcomed almost anything from Peter, and he said ‘no’ to almost nothing. It was a power Peter was trying very hard not to abuse.

The arm around his waist loosened a little. Peter kept his head pressed to Wade’s chest, soothed by the even rhythm of his heartbeat. His eyelids grew heavy. Hm. Maybe fatigue was contagious.

Peter had just about nodded off himself when his brain buzzed unpleasantly with his Quirk. Jerking up, he turned away from Wade’s grasping hands. There was no threat in the apartment as far as he could see, but he let his Quirk continue to work. He watched his own arm reach out and snap up the remote, turning it towards the television. The volume went up.

Carlton Drake was standing at a podium, talking with his hands. He was lit up with the flashing lights of many cameras. Behind him stood a thinly smiling Alexander Pierce as well as a captain and a couple of officers from the NYPD.

“-too long has this community been served by outdated practices,” Drake was saying, his voice growing louder with every button push. “New York City has the highest number of Pro Heroes per capita, and yet crime rates in this city increase every year. Why is that?” He answered his own question almost immediately. “It's because your current Pro Heroes have their hands tied by an outdated public security model that puts you, the citizen, at risk. They are ineffective! They are ill-equipped! They are distracted by other pursuits! And some of them, quite frankly, have Quirks unsuited for the work that you, the taxpayer, are paying them to do.”

Peter slid off the couch and closer to the television, trying to figure out why he was panicking.

Wade reached for him and missed. “Honey-”

“What if there was a solution to all that?” Drake proposed. “What if things were easier? What if you could count on a Pro Hero response that will stop any criminal in their tracks?” Drake beamed, then with a gesture, took a step back. “Meet… the Guard.”

Amongst gasps, the camera shifted over, focusing on the approach of several newcomers.

No, that didn’t describe it well.

They gasped at the arrival of three eight-foot  _ creatures _ walking out onto the stage. In the light of day, their faces were jarring, obviously monstrous. Grinning, needle-filled mouths had more than one person in the crowd backing up a step.

But they weren’t creatures at all. More correctly, they were men or women in a rippling, masculine-leaning exo-skeleton Quirk—and to the onlookers, they looked terrifying.

Peter, who had seen these things before, wasn’t doing much better. Two of them—the green one and the grayish white one—looked very familiar to Peter. They were upstaged by the third one, who was mostly red. He seemed to enjoy the spectacle more than the others, even waving at a few cameras with an expression that seemed to express even more malice than his compatriots.

But that wasn’t the extent of the presentation. Behind them, several heavily armed militia-type people lined up. They all wore black and white armor with Life Foundation branding, and they stood at attention, unlike the one in the red exoskeleton.

Drake took over the microphone together. “The Guard operates on a very simple set of principles. Investigate. Isolate. Eliminate.” He paused, letting that sink in before saying with a grin, “No distractions! No weaknesses! No games! Just pure efficiency. The Guard have highly augmented artificial Quirks that support them in every terrain, and they are elevated further by a squad of highly trained Support personnel.”

Yanking the microphone from the podium, Drake began pacing in front of the crowd. “Don’t be mistaken. These are not your average sidekicks, folks! These are military-trained personnel, and only those with the best and most useful Quirks were recruited for this enterprise. No deadbeats, just doers.” The microphone switched hands as he gestured at the line-up of stone-faced Life Foundation agents. “All in all, this whole group has been field tested internationally, in multiple municipalities, and no matter what community they are placed in, the crime rate drops between eighty-five to ninety-three percent New York, that is success!”

Drake paused, as if relishing in that accomplishment. He clasped the microphone in both hands, breathing in deeply. “And thanks to the cooperation of the Central Hero Agency and the NYPD, you will have a taste of that success. From now until the end of the year, the Guard will be taking over the duties of all Pro Heroes working in and around Manhattan island. Effectively immediately, all agencies will be hereby deactivated. The police will also be-”

Whatever else he had left to say was lost, defeated by the flurry of questions thrown at him by alarmed listeners and reporters. He lifted both hands, mouth moving as he attempted to address the fervor—and then Peter turned off the television, looking for Wade.

Having vaulted over the back of the couch, Wade was across the apartment. He had his phone in hand—a thick, bullet proof, monster of a thing protected even further by a Hello Kitty case. He stared at it for a while before slowly coming back to Peter.

Catching Peter’s eyes, he said, “Guess it’s happening. I’m on vacation. Indefinitely.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that. His throat closed up a little. He swallowed several times as Wade rounded the couch. He’d yet to find anything to say by the time Wade sat down heavily and leaned back. Wade threaded his fingers together on top of his head. He was hard to read like this—almost expressionless. Almost peaceful, if not for the tenseness of his jaw and the way his Adam’s apple jumped with a swallow.

Several beats later, he shifted his attention back to Peter, hairless eyebrows rocketing up. “Road trip?”


	12. Chapter 12

Planning for a road trip wasn’t on Peter’s top ten list of priorities. Or even his top one hundred. There were far more important things to worry about.

Like trying to figure out how to be a vigilante when even the pros were out of work. Or studying for finals, which were just around the corner. Or keeping Tony Stark at arm’s length when the man clearly wanted Peter under his wing. Or mending his fraying relationship with MJ, which was crumbling under the weight of too many lies of omission.

ESU in general could use more of his attention, now that he thought about it. The rift between Support Track and Hero Track was wider than ever with the suspension of all Pro Hero agencies. Drake’s press conference had shaken the student body to the core. After all, the Guard wasn’t an indulgent lark by a billionaire. It was a multi-year attempt to reinvent and privatize Pro Hero Society, and if it worked?

Pro Heroes as they knew them would be out of business, and all the prep work they’d toiled through at ESU would be obsolete.

Peter wasn’t an alarmist in this. After sleeping on it for a day, he came to the conclusion that there was no way this was going to work. Three augmented guys could not cover all of Manhattan, even with an army of Support staff. On top of years of experience, Peter had one of the fastest methods of transportation in the city, and even for him, it was impossible. What was concerning was the fact that both the Central Hero Agency and the NYPD were allowing it in the first place. How did Drake convince them to let it happen?

Peter had very few people he could talk about this at ESU, however. His peers were still fixated on the worst-case scenario—that the Guard would take over Pro Hero duties in New York City permanently. For many of them, even the possibility of that was heartbreaking—for sidekick and future Hero alike. In fact, the strength of this shared feeling was enough to create a rare moment of solidarity between the Tracks.

It lasted roughly twenty-four hours. At that point, Hero Track picked up on the fact that Support Track wasn’t nearly as upset by the existential threat to their careers. After all, many agencies served other functions, and, for better or worse, Support Track was heavily trained in administrative tasks. If some of the agencies survived a hypothetical purge, a Pro Hero career was still viable for Support Track in New York City. The Defenders operated out of a combination bar/law office. The Fantastic Four acted as diplomats and scientists. The X-Men ran a Pre-K to grade twelve school for kids with especially dangerous Quirks. There was more to do in the world of Pro Heroes than hero-ing alone.

Ever the realists about their career, Support Track students had moved on to Plan B while Hero Track continued to chew on the death of Plan A. And when some Support Track students suggested—with good intentions—that Hero Track could just pivot to applying for positions outside of the city (or even outside the state), things got nasty.

Peter came out of a class on Wednesday to the sight of a massive fist fight on the quad where tensions had boiled over. He’d never forget the sight of teachers wading into a crowd, dodging elbows and fired off Quirks to scruff or restrain students using the techniques that they themselves had taught them. With his photography instincts, he even snapped a photo of it.

In a rare show of caution, MJ told him to sit on it. Shaken by the eruption of conflict within even her own team—one of the most integrated student activities on campus—MJ pulled Dr. McCoy into the final editing sessions of every published paper afterwards. She was all too aware of the fact that she, of all people, spoke directly to the students with her work, and the last thing she wanted to do was incite more violence.

But the damage had already been done, in Peter’s opinion. The fist fight on the quad had resulted in twenty suspensions and three expulsions—mostly freshmen but also a smattering of juniors and seniors alike. The argument within MJ’s team had resulted in two resignations, including Doreen and Theresa Cassidy. A third resignation came in a day later from Flash, though it seemed to come more out of a sense of guilt than anger. After all, he’d been the one to start off that fateful conversation that ended up with his peers screaming at each other.

The tension on campus was immense. Some of their peer’s entire identities were tied up in this concept that they were going to be superheroes. Of course, they were going to freak out. Of course, they were going to lash out at people who didn’t understand, and, of course, people would start huddling up with the people who understood them best. Hero Track students who were dealing with this blow better than their peers were mad at Support Track for brushing this off, and Support Track students were pissed off at Hero Track students for taking all of this out on them instead.

And some Support Track students, bitter over years of playing the second fiddle, were quick to rub in the fact that, for the first time since the inception of the reviled Quirk assessment, it was going to be Support Track graduates who were the valuable job candidates in New York, not their supposedly more powerful peers.

Bad petty actors on both sides, in Peter’s opinion. In these circumstances, Peter wasn’t sure even MJ could help ease the friction. But she was trying and willing to partner up with anyone who would help her, even the man on campus she butted heads with the most—their president, Dr. Hank McCoy.

But after four years of being stubbornly blocked from the editorial process, Dr. McCoy was a pleasant surprise to have in their office. His attitude towards the truth leaned far closer Wanda’s reign than Beck’s, and he was far more likely to respect them as the experts in the room. As such, MJ’s attitude towards him rapidly thawed. McCoy and MJ would often read over the final stories and articles well into the night together, talking about implications and perceptions, and making final edits.

After his first session with them went so extraordinarily well, MJ even gave McCoy a new weekly column to work with—a direct address from the university president to their entire audience. This delighted McCoy beyond measure. He often hurried over to the office with at least three or four times the content that the column could reasonably accommodate, and it became one of Peter’s jobs to help him cut words and get to the point in the limited amount of characters he’d been allotted.

The result of their partnership with McCoy was a shift in tone that was immediately apparent to all who subscribed to it. Still devoted to truth telling, a lot more of their digital real estate was redesigned to help people adjust to potential changes in their job market. Major pieces since then included announcements of support groups, lists of resources on campus, explorations of Pro Hero agencies outside of the state, and interviews with Pro Heroes who had moved on to different careers.

Notably, however, there were fewer and fewer of the investigative or justice-seeking pieces MJ preferred—though, as McCoy said, providing a factual and realistic peace of mind to their readership was its own kind of justice, especially to those directly impacted by such an unprecedented upheaval.

Peter had a feeling MJ would have had more to say about such “crowd control” efforts if McCoy himself hadn’t pitched, on day one, a multi-issue investigative piece that dived deep into how the hell a back alley deal like the Guard got rubber stamped and approved without anyone knowing about it. This, of course, was delivered hand-in-hand with a passionate and practically encyclopedic rant of all the counts of corruption and insider dealing that the Central Hero Agency had been connected with since the late seventies.

Enough for a full lecture. Enough to put Peter asleep! And enough for MJ to know an ally when she saw him.

The unexpected benefit of McCoy’s near constant presence in their office was that Beck had been entirely deflated by the presence of his boss. There was simply no room for him once McCoy and MJ were on the same page. McCoy was also quicker to silence Beck in favor of hearing from one of the students instead, and, with him in the room, pitches started flowing as freely as they did before Beck arrived.

Peter’s favorite day had to be when McCoy bluntly vetoed Beck’s suggestion to feature the teachers’ side of the fight in the quad, a thinly veiled project that seemed specifically positioned to focus on Beck himself and the black eye he’d received in the process. He pointed out that bringing up the fight yet again three week later would only stoke the flames that were just dying out, and that Beck must have “completely missed the memo” about the current direction of the paper. Beck’s face was a thing of beauty.

Peter had to excuse himself from the meeting, giving himself a few minutes in the hallway to calm down. MJ followed him out a few moments later, and, despite the strain in their friendship, she made a beeline for him, already grinning. Once they collided, they slapped at each other’s arms, wheezing with ugly laughter until they got all of the glee out of their systems. Beck had made the paper miserable, and it was a true joy to see him get put in his place.

But still, weeks later, the pressure remained. There were no more fights, but ESU was silently at war with itself. Patrols and bouts of vigilantism were fraught with the danger of being caught by the Guard. His friendship with MJ remained strained. Texts and calls from Tony Stark were almost constant, and his finals crept ever closer.

And so, Peter was left where he started: planning a road trip that he shouldn’t have even been contemplating. But he couldn’t stop. It was a small smudge of joy in a very stressful time in his life.

They planned it for his spring break, and they argued cheerfully about what to do. Peter, having never left New York, wanted to go to big and famous landmarks. Wade, having travelled literally everywhere, wanted to visit the esoteric and the weird. In his enthusiasm, Wade pinned a map against the wall for their ideas, very much voiding his deposit—if he hadn’t voided it already.

Peter had more than one reason to encourage the planning. He couldn’t miss that Wade had been unhappy about the sudden furlough. He’d tried to brush it off (“If anything, I’m more worried about you. If this little pilot show takes off, boom, there goes your job security.”), but Peter could tell he was upset. Regardless of how Wade felt about being a “real Hero” to people, the idea that he was a Pro Hero at all was very important to him. Peter didn’t miss that it was just as much a part of Wade’s identity as it was to some of his classmates, and look what happened at ESU.

So, Peter pumped the gas on the road trip conversation, allowing himself to get a little excited too. It was the first vacation he’d ever had with a boyfriend—or any partner at all. Despite not knowing Wade yet, even Aunt May was getting in on the fun, sending him links of landmarks and pictures of places for his consideration.

But Peter didn’t miss the fact that New York was hurting. Few were happy about the fact that the Life Foundation was suddenly the solution to their public safety needs, and even fewer liked the Guard themselves.

Given his previous run-ins with them, Peter was a little biased. But now he finally had a chance to observe them a little more closely, and he was peeved to see that their Quirks and his Quirks were very similar. At least visually. Peter had up close and personal knowledge of all the different ways that those guys could use the solidified goop of their exoskeleton, but it was different seeing it in the light of day. He was not exactly the first guy who came up with swinging in the air to get from place to place, but  _ come on _ . There was more than one think piece in so-called reputable newspapers about how Spider-Man must have been the inspiration for the artificial Quirks that the Guards manipulated.

No thank you.

But were they more efficient? The jury was out on that. All he’d seen so far was that they apprehended people quickly. Drake hadn’t been kidding about them being field tested; the Guard worked as a unit. Brutally. Quickly. And without mercy. It didn’t really surprise Peter to hear that the Life Foundation building had a semi-permanent wall of people picketing it for human rights violations. Some villains and criminals didn’t deserve a military-trained monster slamming into them at full speed, especially not the guys and gals Peter usually talked into turning themselves in.

Even so, a few weeks into the experiment, Peter still thought that the Guard wasn’t going to work in the long run. On top of gathering some public ire, there were only four members who had that goopy exoskeleton Quirk, including at least one who hadn’t attended the press conference. Geography was still a concern. While they had their own versions of sidekicks, those agents didn’t move unless one of those eight-foot guys was leading them—and Manhattan was a large island with a ton of people. 

Of course, there was a fifth that Peter knew of too, but Peter never saw Eddie’s bodyguard with them. Not even once. He didn’t see him around Central Park anymore—not that he was looking—and even Eddie no longer appeared on the routes Peter had come to expect him on.

The guy must have seen the writing on the wall and skipped town.

-

The thing is, Peter discovered two days later, Eddie Brock had not skipped town. Not at all.

The day had been slow, and his late afternoon class had been canceled. Suddenly armed with extra free time, Peter crept out on a cautious patrol, staying as close to the street as he dared. Nothing much happened at first. Outside of a bodega, he broke up a loud verbal altercation between a girl and her boyfriend. Three streets over, he retrieved a pet snake from a drain. He joined a grandma in picking up the trash that had blown in her apartment building’s prized—and very dead—rose bushes. He walked home a middle aged man who had skidded and fallen in a patch of ice.

Then, just as night had truly fallen, he heard the sound of gunshots and shouts in the distance. He propelled himself towards it, swinging up from an alley to the top of a roof when it became clear that the chase he was overhearing was at least twelve stories above street level.

He swung ahead, trying to cut the dark figures off as they leapt from building to building. It worked a little too well. Peter got ahead of them, turning around just in time to see a sweating Eddie Brock vault over a gap between buildings. It was the kind of gap that a man with a mere empathy Quirk should not have even attempted unless he had a death wish, but Brock landed it successfully, looking a little green around the edges.

Peter watched, stunned—and that was his mistake. Because then Brock, chest heaving, caught sight of him standing there like an idiot. His face twisted into something bitter, and then he charged, gaining bulk and height and danger as he ate up the distance between them.

Peter had a moment to wrap his head around the fact that  _ Eddie and Eddie’s bodyguard were the same person _ before he was tackled into an air conditioning unit. The metal crunched around him, crushing him. Peter tore at the meaty hand fisted in his suit.

“I  _ knew  _ it,” it—Eddie?—snarled in his face. “You were after us all along.” His voice was deep and harsh, and his terrifying teeth snapped too close to Peter’s face.

“W-wait!” Peter gasped out breathlessly. “Wait-”

But Eddie didn’t wait. He yanked Peter out of the air conditioning unit and threw him across the rooftop. Peter hit the floor shoulder first and kept rolling, unsteadily climbing to his feet. Seeing Eddie follow, he backed up, hands raised, until his heels hit the edge of the roof. “Wait,” he said. “Wait, what’s going on, Eddie?” He tasted blood in his mouth. “Why were you running?”

The answer came in the form of a flash bang. It erupted between the two of them with an explosion of light and sound. Peter closed his eyes and covered his ears, but it didn’t help much. The light seared through his lenses and his eyelids, making him stagger, and the sound burst felt like it pierced straight through his eardrums.

For several long seconds, all Peter was aware of was light and shadow, ringing and silence.

When he was finally able to open his eyes, he saw Eddie wasn’t in much of a better state. He was on a knee, shaking his head sharply as if to dispel afterimages. Both of his massive hands were clasped around where his ears would be, if the exo-skeleton had them.

And in between the two of them, one ex-reporter and one part-time vigilante, was a man in black and red. And that man in black and red, equipped like he’d robbed a military bunker, was bent at the waist in front of Peter, peering at him in open curiosity.

“Doth mine eyes deceive me,” Deadpool asked, sounding excited, “or are you who I think you are?” He looked Peter up and down and said, with a squeal, “You are! You are! Oh em  _ gee _ . I left my autograph book in my other pants too, poopy.” He put both fists under his chin, looking at Peter like a charmed schoolgirl. “Would you settle for signing my katanas instead? I swear I take good care of them.”

Stunned, Peter said nothing, bending away from him. Deadpool might have gone on in this vein for a little while longer if Eddie hadn’t moved. Because he did, Peter got an up close and personal view of his loved one flipping from overenthusiastic superfan to cold blooded murderer as easy as a flick of a switch.

Wade pulled out his gun and things… deteriorated. Quickly.

Peter webbed up Wade’s hand, leaving Wade to gape at it stupidly. A second later, they ducked as one under a massive arm swiping at their heads. Wade jumped to the side to avoid Eddie, and Peter, having no more room, had to flip off the edge of the roof. Swearing, he swung back up immediately, then launched both feet into Eddie’s back, sending him sprawling and even further away from Wade.

Peter had been in more than his fair share of unbalanced fights, but this?  _ This was ridiculous. _

Peter suddenly had his arms clamped to his sides by a crushing bear hug. He squirmed and writhed against it, his feet scraping against the ground. He needed to stop putting his back to Deadpool!

“Hey, uh, Webs?” Wade said, sounding irritated. “Do you mind butting out? I know this looks like I’m trying to murder him—and I totally am—but it’s all above board!” When Peter grunted, not answering, Wade turned his head towards him. He sniffed. “…Hey, I think we use the same shampoo.”

They did. From the same bottle even. Burning with fury, Peter used what little leverage he had to reel up and stomp on Wade’s knee—and stomp  _ hard _ . At the same time, he found and twisted both of Wade’s thumbs as far as he could without breaking them. He was promptly dropped on his face. By mutual agreement, both Peter and Wade put space between each other, both hurting in different ways.

Concrete crackled from the top of a stairway access building. When he looked up, Peter saw Eddie perched there like a nightmarish gargoyle. “You’re nothing but a Life Foundation lapdog,” Eddie accused, eyes on Wade.

Equally pissed, Wade pointed at him. “Hey, I resent that! I am a Central Hero Agency lapdog, thank you- _ ah _ !”

Eddie had thrown himself at Wade again, teeth bared and hands ready to shred. Peter threw himself in the fray again, kicking Wade away so he wouldn’t get impaled by Eddie’s goop. A second later, he shot out another web to keep Wade from jumping up and decapitating Eddie with his sword. As Wade fought with the roof for ownership of one of his precious blades, Peter got clocked across the face by one of Eddie’s fists.

He rolled with it, teeth clenching, and shot off another round of webbing, ready to swing to another rooftop. But then Eddie leapt forward and chomped on the web, snapping it in half and leaving Peter with a limp line and a pit in his stomach. If his webbing was that easily destroyed, he desperately needed to revisit his formula.

Eddie spat the rest of it on the floor and started to advance on Peter. “He’s right, Spider-Man,” he snarled. “Back.  _ Off. _ ”

“What are you going to do, kill him?” Peter hissed. “Do you even know what his Quirk is? It will never work!”

Those white inhuman eyes gleamed with malice. “I’ll make him wish we could,” Eddie promised darkly, violence in his voice.

Peter was stunned and disturbed. Who was the good guy on this roof? Who was the Hero? The bad guy? The victim? Everything was so wrong—and Peter, for one, was  _ fed up _ .

He shot two lines of webs at Eddie’s left foot. Once they connected, he yanked with all of his strength. Not expecting it, Eddie toppled back, falling on his ass—and Peter leapt right over him, throwing his shoulder into the chest of the man sneaking up on Eddie. All of the air escaped Wade in a wheezing rush. He just barely stayed standing, his hands like iron on Peter’s biceps.

Peter backed him up, webbing the front of his suit securely, and then, while Wade was still stunned, threw him off the edge of the roof. Wade, contrary to the very end, let out a gleeful shout of joy all the way down. Peter waited until the line went taunt, then secured the web on the side of the building.

Then he turned, walking back to the hunched over ex-reporter with both hands raised. “Now. As I was saying…”

Eddie was already laughing. It was not a joyful noise. Peter didn’t take it to heart. Eddie’s head was low to his chest, and he had stayed where Peter dropped him. While Peter’s spidey sense had been on high alert this entire time, it wasn’t jumping in the way that was a prelude to an attack. Still, Peter’s hair was standing on end, and it would help if Eddie stopped laughing. It would help an awful lot.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Eddie…”

Eddie’s head snapped up, white eyes narrowing dangerously. “You. Understand. Nothing,” he growled, his black skin rippling. “We are not Eddie. We. Are.  _ Venom. _ ”

Peter approached him cautiously. “Okay, Venom,” Peter allowed, his eyes constantly moving over the man. He knew what that goop could do by now. Still, curiosity overrode prudence. “Are you part of the Guard?”

Venom snarled at him. “ _ No! _ ”

Peter winced at the force of that. “Okay-”

“We want nothing to do with them,” Venom spat quickly, overriding Peter’s attempt to pacify him.

Peter raised his hand. “Samesies!” Venom stared at his hand suspiciously as if expecting it to grow barbed tentacles—and maybe that was a reasonable assumption to make of an enemy. For him. “So… let’s just relax, okay? No one needs to die today.” And then, rambling, he said, “All I want is to keep people from dying. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted-”

Venom’s eyes jerked from his hand to his face. “So do we,” he said, putting weight in every word. He stood slowly, gaining feet on Peter by the second. “We ran and we ran and we ran to keep people from dying, and here we are. We even tried to leave this city.” He bared his teeth. “ _ He wouldn’t let us. _ ”

“Deadpool?” Peter asked. “Or the Guard?”

Venom leaned in slightly, eyes focused. The smell surrounding Venom was confusing and overpowering, like blood, sweat, and glue. The squelch of his Quirk at this distance was loud and more than a little sickening. There were plenty of people in the world with inhuman or animalistic Quirks, but none looked as alien as the man in front of him. None looked as threatening. 

Peter was just about to call it quits with their silent standoff when Venom suddenly snorted. He rocked back on his heels with the attitude of someone who’d been told off by an adult, and he followed it up by crossing his arms and looking stubbornly off to the left.

But when he spoke, it was with Eddie’s voice again. “From one loser to another,” Eddie said with tired humor, “you better run, Spider-Man. Run while you still can. Run while you’re still so unknown. Run while the Guard doesn’t know your name.” Venom’s head rolled over until he looked at the webbing that kept Wade dangling over the city. “Run before the Guard picks up on how much your scent is intertwined with his.”

Peter flinched at that, looking back at Wade instinctively. Venom used that distraction to escape, diving silently off the side of the building.

Hands flexing, Peter gave himself a minute before heading back over to Wade, chewing over the inevitable conversation this would prompt.

But that conversation wouldn’t come yet. The webbing was no longer taut. Wade had cut himself free and had free-fallen five stories to get away from him.

And an hour later, well after Peter had let himself into Wade’s apartment, Wade walked in his own front door in civilian clothes. He was limping but cheery. “I saw Spider-Man today!” he announced in lieu of a greeting, as pleased as a fox in a hen house. He closed the door and walked in, whistling tunelessly.

Peter said nothing, chewing on his lip, biting back all the questions about how the hell Wade was still on a mission if he’d been permanently benched by his employers like everyone else.

-

MJ always had a good nose for trouble. She was always the first one in any circle that poked holes in a convenient story. She started dropping her commentary about the Guard in their group chat the second the lesser agencies in New York were frozen, well before ESU exploded into conflict. Preoccupied by other things at the time, Peter had left her on read, but Ned and Betty had responded here and there—not exactly encouraging her, but not silencing her either. Betty was willing to give any thought its own day in court, switching between public defender and devil’s advocate on a whim. As for Ned, he tended to temper her worst assumptions with his own brand of optimism, but that optimism seemed weaker now. They committed to watching, seeing, and waiting things out.

There really wasn’t a whole lot of information back then. Now…

Well, now it was different.

The Guard looked okay at first. Not great. Not warm. Not welcomed by the communities they were in. But just okay. They were spread thin, just as Peter had predicted.

As expected, there was an initial, opportunistic surge of crime that sought to take advantage of this. Accordingly, the Life Foundation’s newly built jail—strong enough to hold even the Hulk, it boasted—had hundreds of detainees within days. Hundreds more within weeks.

Thousands by the end of the month.

From what Peter could tell, the Guard wasn’t nearly as spread thin as they projected outward into the community. What they lacked with feet on the floor, they made up with intel and data from many sources. Thanks to cameras, cell phone data, and other evidence, everyone was tracked down eventually. In the end, people got away with crimes for a day or a week before an eight-foot-tall monster knocked down their door or dragged them away from their work.

And there was a rumor going around that some of the people dragged away were never heard from again, and this rumor would grow feet and legs and start to run the closer they got to the end of the year.

But in the beginning, the feeling most felt was ‘good riddance’. A crime was a crime, no matter who did—or didn’t—see you break the law. As for Peter, he looked down at his cell phone more and more often with a sense of distrust. As time passed, he would eventually start leaving it in his dorm.

In those early days, Drake was on the news every night, triumphant as a king and sharing updated metrics about his newest project. He made it clear that they owed their peace to the creation of the absolute perfect power, the artificial Quirk he’d given to the four top members of the Guard.

“Only made possible by the Life Foundation, of course,” he said one night with a made-for-magazine smile.

After Venom’s ominous warning, Peter tried to stay away from the Guard, but that was hard, given the fact that he was breaking the law every time Spider-Man stepped out of a building. He was tempting fate, and, one cold afternoon, he got a taste of what it would be like if the Guard seriously pursued him.

He was overseeing a heated argument over a fender bender, trying to mediate them away from coming to blows, when the largest Guard—a gray one they called Riot—landed right beside him. He glanced down at Peter, bared his needle teeth at him, and said pointedly, “Good afternoon, citizen.”

The second the man’s voice entered his ears, Peter’s Quirk activated so hard, it felt like his brain was melting. Before he realized what he was doing, he free-jumped off of the bridge away from Riot and came to a rolling stop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. Then he abruptly sat down on the concrete, his heart galloping and his teeth on edge.

Similarly unnerved, the arguing New Yorkers made their peace with each other quickly, exchanging information and getting back in their vehicles. It was a handy end to a tedious dispute, but it didn’t sit well with Peter. Keeping the peace through fear seemed like an incompatible combination. And besides, he hated the feeling he got when his spidey sense knew something that he did not.

And his efforts to learn that something went absolutely nowhere. When being around the Guard for too long made him want to rip his own skin off, it seemed like Venom was the only option he had for information. But his attempts to talk to Eddie were equally useless. The only times he found the guy these days were while he was fending off Deadpool’s attempts to kill him—and the second Spider-Man inserted himself into those conflicts, Venom ran.

Deadpool was quite peeved about it.

Over the next week, Peter ended up tangling with Deadpool more than once, and dealing with him was like trying to tie a leash to a whirlwind. The man was extremely hard to predict—and mercurial to boot. In one interaction, Deadpool asked him to follow him on Instagram—begged, really. In another, he cut Peter’s webbing mid-swing, sending him plummeting fifteen stories. Having never freefallen that far, Peter panicked, forgetting he was Spider-Man. At the last minute, he twisted and landed on his feet, deeply shaken. His anxiety morphed into rage when he spotted Deadpool in the distance, waving a scorecard above his head, and he was left mentally spitting nails with nothing to show for it.

(Though, admittedly, later? He was way more peeved about the card than the fall. Surely his landing deserved more than a 7.8…)

But he was starting to understand why Wade had such a bad reputation amongst other Pro Heroes. Deadpool was absolutely fucking infuriating as an enemy. A dealer of death, injury, and obnoxiousness bound up in leather and Kevlar.

It wasn’t like Peter was unaware that Wade had a sly streak to him. Wade was mischievous with Peter too, but his pranks leaned towards pretending to eat all the pizza while Peter was in the shower or making “eyes” at him and leaning in for a kiss before pretending his intention was to adjust something behind him. Peter had fallen for  _ that _ one way too many times…

And Wade’s jokes were almost universally terrible. Once, in the middle of the night, Wade shook Peter awake because there was a serious leak in his kitchen. Determined to save Wade’s apartment, a half-asleep Peter kicked his way out of bed and ran over. But when he ripped open the doors hiding the plumbing, he was instead confronted with an impressive specimen of a certain vegetable—and a boyfriend crying with laughter.

It was indeed a  _ serious leek _ , and Peter was still half-ashamed he’d wasted it by hurling it at Wade’s head. But that was the extent of the tricks aimed at Peter. As a whole, they were harmless, occasionally flabbergasting, and sometimes even a little funny.

But with Spider-Man, his pranks were dangerous. Occasionally malicious. And always, always frustrating.

It got to the point where Peter seriously worried about the future of their relationship. He couldn’t even begin to talk to Wade about this without revealing a lot of things he wasn’t ready to. His other identity was still safe—he had so far managed to completely avoid speaking to Wade while masked up—but that safety came with its own obstacles. For starters, how the hell was Peter supposed to ask him about his attempts to murder an ex-reporter—on the Central Hero Authority’s orders, no less!—if the only other person in the vicinity was Spider-Man?

It didn’t help that, all this time, Wade was continuously joking about his transformation into Joe Average—citizen, taxpayer, cog in the global capitalist machine. Why pretend he was as benched as everyone else when Deadpool was still running around shooting at people?

Peter was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was torn between his continuing desire to be around Wade,  _ be _ with Wade… and his desire to knock Wade on his ass, sit on his chest, and interrogate him about his Eddie Brock assignment—and why it had turned from a half-assed surveillance mission to a full-blown assassination attempt. The tension between these two needs made him angry, and he could only smother so much of his anger before Wade noticed. And Wade  _ always  _ noticed.

This resulted in Peter tiptoeing around himself, avoiding the elephant in the room, even when Wade nudged it intentionally. He grew tenser, snappier, and quieter when they were together, and he deflected all of Wade’s attempts to cheer him up. This went on for days.

And then, three hours after climbing out of a trap hole Deadpool had set up for Spider-Man, he snapped.

He’d shown up at Wade’s apartment to pick up a textbook he’d left behind only to find the man himself hopping on one foot, half peeled out of his usual uniform with an arsenal of weapons spread out on a counter that, up until this point, Peter had only seen covered with food. His pants laid, crumpled, next to a black goop covered knife, and ammo had spilled out across the kitchen floor.

So much for Joe Average.

Wade’s eyes widened. “I can explain!”

Peter didn’t really give him a chance to. Instead, he slammed the front door shut and pushed Wade up against the wall, pinning him there with one hand. Wade’s eyes turned into white saucers in his mask. He kept looking at Peter’s hand and at his face—at one, then at the other, like he couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening here.

But he wasn’t the only one battling his thoughts. A hundred different questions—different demands—burned at Peter’s lips, and the longer he failed to choose one to start with, the more he found himself fuming. 

“Petey,” Wade breathed. Both hands came up slowly. Leather padded fingers skated slowly, gently, across the thin fabric of Peter’s clenched forearm. And Peter…

Shivered.

His anger abruptly burned into a different sort of frustration—one that actually had a better outlet. Because ever since he watched Wade try to murder a man, Peter had kept his hands to himself, but none of this—none of the resentment or the disappointment—could quite smother the yearning Peter still felt for him.

Swallowing harshly, Peter closed the space between the two of them, leaning his body against Wade’s half-dressed form. He nudged heatedly at Wade’s jaw until Wade cursed and yanked his mask off. When they finally kissed, they crashed into each other, the pressure a little sharp and a little unkind.

This was so much better than him yelling at Wade.

As if agreeing, Wade moaned against his mouth. Buzzing and dizzy, Peter reached between them to pull the waistband of Wade’s briefs down to his thick, scarred thighs. His own button and zipper were a little hard to navigate, given the way Wade’s hands kept flexing and pulling at his hips in encouragement.

It was the angriest sex Peter had ever participated in or initiated. Later, he’d think he probably hated it. But in the moment, he didn’t stop, gathering both of their cocks in his hand and jerking them off until Wade came. Twice.

It was a mess. They were a mess.

“Whoo!” Wade cheered afterwards. “So, that was fun.” He kept peppering Peter’s forehead with kisses, running his hands over Peter’s tight, tight shoulders.

Peter left his face low and his neck bent. He kept grasping for the feelings that had fueled him before, but they were hardly even there anymore. Trying to yank them back up again while Wade was here, loving all over him, felt like trying to glare while a dog was giving you enthusiastic puppy kisses.

“…I don’t want to talk about it,” he said instead. About why he was angry in the first place. Or about what Wade was up to when he was supposed to be on an extended work break. His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Okay!” Wade said brightly. Smiling broadly, he pushed them away from the wall a little before ducking, picking Peter up in a fireman’s carry.

Peter submitted to it, swatting at the closest thing he could reach—Wade’s ass. He grumbled under his breath, still peeved, and now weak kneed and exhausted. Damn Wade’s refractory period and his own competitive nature. His wrist  _ hurt _ .

Wade bullied him into the tub—yet another new fixture in his apartment—and covered them both with hot soapy water. Peter found himself naked and between Wade’s legs in a very short period of time, his back to Wade’s chest. Peter couldn’t stop frowning. Jumping on Wade resolved nothing, he knew. At least Wade seemed to sense he still wasn’t in the best of moods and was treating him gently.

If only every other part of their relationship was as easy as this.

If only Peter had the strength to say,  _ Hi, I saw you try and murder someone today,  _ without feeling as if he was about to cry.

“I miss hair,” Wade said out of nowhere. Or maybe it wasn’t out of nowhere at all. He was ten fingers deep into Peter’s hair, massaging shampoo into his scalp. “Mine was always short. Business on the sides and party up top. Only the party was one of those awkward office parties where everyone stands around the conference table and makes small talk while the executive-type person stumbles through some prepared remarks.” He paused, then said thickly, “I had an undercut, is what I’m trying to say.”

Peter’s heart hurt. Wade so rarely brought up what he looked like before. “You can play with my hair whenever you want.”

Wade clicked his tongue. Then he gathered Peter’s hair together, sculpting it. “How about a mohawk?” Typical Wade. Give him an inch and he’d take a mile. Peter shot him a one-eyed-glare over his shoulder. “Think about it. You’ve got this  _ very _ sexy streak of rebellion in you, but your vibe? All wrong. Throws off a guy’s first impression, you know?”

“And what was your first impression of me?” Peter was, in spite of himself, interested. “What kind of person did you think I was?”

Wade abandoned his grip on Peter’s hair, hugging him tightly around the middle instead. “A very good boy who only allows the most wholesome of memes in his Christian Minecraft server…” He left a loud, smacking kiss on the back of Peter’s soapy neck. 

Peter snorted and laid down the law. “No mohawk.”

“That’s not very cash money of you.” Wade stuck out his tongue, making a farting noise. Then his hand found and explored a rapidly purpling bruise on Peter’s pec where a certain Pro Hero had slammed the butt of his sword. Peter fought not to react to Wade’s curiosity. The bruise meant nothing to him. In fact, it probably meant more to Deadpool, given that Peter had kicked him in the head as revenge—and not without force.

The thought of said revenge had him emerging out of his trance. He shifted just enough to look at Wade’s face. But if Peter had landed a serious injury, there was no trace of it now. He was glad. What seemed okay between a vigilante and a Pro Hero in the heat of battle wasn’t remotely fine in the light of day between two lovers. Especially when one knew the identity of the person he was fighting, and the other… did not.

And for that matter, pinning said lover to the wall during an argument wasn’t very good either. Remembering it even now made Peter feel both guilty and afraid. What did it say about him that he was more used to fighting Deadpool than he was peacefully airing out his grievances with Wade? Peter was never particularly good at compartmentalizing Spider-Man and Peter Parker either. At this rate, their relationship was going to fail not because Wade was trying to murder someone, but because Peter was far more a vigilante than he was a college student, a boyfriend, or even a civilian.

Peter continued to watch Wade. After a moment, Wade’s eyes met his. They gazed right back at him, searchingly, before they warmed. “Hey. Whatever this is, we’ll get through it.” He squeezed Peter a little tighter before dropping a kiss on his cheek. “Okay?”

“…Okay,” Peter said, accepting another on his lips. Then another as they perfected the angle. He found Wade’s hands and threaded their fingers together. 

He hoped Wade was right.

-

At ESU, tensions continued to mount. The school’s official response to the possible extinction of their job opportunities was on brand: Reach higher. Adapt quicker. Be better.

But students were dropping out in droves. Already a small campus, ESU seemed smaller by the day. Tony Stark was a frequent fixture in the Business Office, following through with his promise to buy students out of their contracts. Just as frequent was Dr. McCoy himself, urging caution and patience. They had a small handful of weeks before the end of the year—and the end of the trial period of the Guard. For all they knew, the experiment had been a disaster, and New York City would still need a steady flow of freshman Pro Heroes.

MJ had her form to drop out on her desk in the newspaper office. She had yet to fill it out. Peter knew this because he stared at it moodily during the last pitch meeting of the year. It was a gloomy session. The room that had felt smaller with the exit of three of their members felt smaller still with the additional voids in the room of people who had called it quits.

When they had enough pitches and assignments to fill the last issue, MJ rattled out the deadlines for the stories, instructing the writers to meet with her separately. Then she paused, looking out into the room, as if considering what to say. At the last second, though, she shook her head. “Here’s to hoping that January brings clarity,” was all she said before dismissing them all.

If only, Peter thought. If only. 

Drained by the developing drama in his personal and educational life, Peter decided to pay Otto a visit, heading over to his lab one cool afternoon. He hoped for Otto’s usual advice, his cutting rationality.

Instead, he got boxes. Lots of boxes. Boxes with Life Foundation stamped all over them.

He found his way through walls and walls of them to the center of the lab where Otto was morosely packing with his multitude of limbs and a group of people Peter didn’t recognize. Peter tensed up the moment eyes landed on him. Despite the open invitation to visit, he felt like an intruder, like he’d walked into the middle of an active surgery theatre, or a courtroom in session. He did not feel welcome.

Otto, on the other hand, seemed relieved at the sight of him. He took Peter’s entrance as an excuse to take a break, and he hurried him out of the room. Spared from the unwanted presence of the Life Foundation, they both sat in the stairwell with cups of fresh tea. Peter wasn’t sure what kind, or even if it was tea. Otto was frazzled.

“You’re the last person I’d ever expect to join up with the Life Foundation,” Peter started.

“So was I!” Otto exclaimed. “It’s not so much that I joined the Life Foundation as it is… well…” He struggled to explain. “The company I was working with was bought by them. Scooped up, really. Even… devoured.” Otto’s expression went distant for a moment before he shuddered and moved back to his boxes. “Only found out last Monday.”

Peter grimaced. “Sorry. That seems so sudden.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t fire me at the get-go. We don’t agree on anything at all. But they wanted me! So they got me.” Otto pursued his lips. His extra limbs moved restlessly, even the ones that rarely ever flexed. “I am all for advancement of the species, and, well, I don’t think Quirk enhancement is the only way to go for that sort of thing. Especially not those…”

Otto trailed off. It seemed like he kept talking around information. He was frowning deeply, as if trying to figure out what to say.

While waiting, Peter shifted on the stairs. The metal was slow to warm, even under sustained body heat. The stairwell had very little ventilation either, and it felt nearly as cold as the outside in here. But there was no one with them on any floor of the space of the rented building—and, if there was, they’d hear them from stories away. Every sound seemed to pick up an echo, save for Otto’s whispered words.

Otto came to a decision. He faced Peter fully, his words grim. “Look.  _ The Guard. _ They’re the crowning jewels of decades of work. Every last one of them has had millions of dollars poured into them, and they’re really marvelous, uh, things-”

“How marvelous are they if all they do is intimidate and scare people?” Peter countered, thinking of Riot.

His tone caught Otto’s attention. His gaze, previously wavering, steadied on Peter like a weight. “Peter… don’t mess with the Guard. Whatever you do.” After a beat, he smiled faintly. “You hit the nail on the head there. The Guard works because they’re frightening in obvious and not so obvious ways.” Otto’s voice deepened. “But you’ve barely scratched the surface of their true nature.”

“What do you know?”

Otto paused. Then he shifted closer to Peter, setting his cup down on the stair. “This stays between the two of us, okay? So listen, and listen well.”

Otto’s tone was deadly serious. Peter had always treated the words from his parents’ friend with the weight they deserved. Even if he didn’t take it, Otto’s advice was always golden. He had never steered him wrong in all the years he had known him. Peter was all ears.

But the Otto of now was lightyears away from the Otto Peter knew. The Otto of the past was friendly, cheerful, absent-minded, fixated, and passionate. Often forgetful, but never cruel, he often strove to embody a  _ c’est la vie _ lifestyle. He frequently let challengers and naysayers pass him by. Let history show who was right, he’d always say. He disliked being proved wrong, but he knew how to laugh it off and move on. He liked attention, and he liked to keep it. Having an audience brought him joy, and he’d gladly filibuster any room that would let him. He liked people that much.

But there was nothing of that man left on Otto’s face now. His eyes were deadened and bloodshot, and his face was almost gaunt, settling into sharp and uncompromising lines. His stubble had flown well past a 5 o’clock shadow into an unkempt beard, and his mouth was heavily chapped, like the tea he had in his hand was the first bit of hydration he’d had in days.

And his expression was deeply, deeply haunted. Peter felt a chill run up his spine.

“There is ancient fear every person shares,” Otto said slowly. “An unrealistic one for the modern age! But a persistent fear nevertheless. If you pretend to do it to a child, the child will cry. If you do it to an adult, an adult will scream. If you”—Otto paused, then continued quieter—“make another adult watch it happen… it will carve an unhealable wound on their very psyche.”

There was a small trembling growing through his body. Whether it was from the cold or from something else, Peter didn’t know. He just settled a hand on the forearm closest to him, a gesture that made Otto smile gratefully, expression a little empty.

He patted the top of Peter’s hand before standing suddenly, walking down a handful of stairs to the closest landing. As he stepped, he said, “This is a fear that the Guard is very familiar with. And you must never, ever put yourself in the position of asking them to teach it to you.” Once he’d reached the landing, Otto turned. His familiar face creased into a pained smile. “For your parents, if for no one else.”

-

Peter’s conversation with Otto hung with him for the rest of the day. It left him distracted and ill at ease. The universe didn’t do much to reassure him either. Icy rain started pouring the second he walked outside. The last of his remaining partners for an important group project bailed on him, quitting school, and a strange woman followed him across too many lines and too many stops when he ducked into the subway.

After an impromptu patrol got him chased halfway around the city by that silent green and black Guard, Peter called it quits and huddled up in his dorm room instead, looking up phobias and answering emails to the sound of rain pelting the side of the building.

That’s how he found the email. It was at least three days old. He didn’t recognize the address, but his school email provider’s usually robust spam filter hadn’t blocked the message right at the gate. Warily, he clicked it open—then rolled his eyes at the short message inside.

_ Call me. -TS _

Underneath the command was an embedded video. Peter played it on low volume, watching with growing confusion at the well-dressed—and very buff—people who walked by the camera. It was a gala of some sort, according to the captioning, and the people who were walking by where the West Coast’s best and brightest Pro Heroes, none of whom Peter had ever met. He was pretty sure.

He eyed the frozen video for a moment longer before sighing, setting aside his laptop to hunt for his phone. He found it under a poorly marked quiz, saw that the battery was dead, and plugged it in. While waiting for enough of a charge, he watched the video three more times, hoping to catch a clue before Tony Stark had to feed it to him.

It was a matter of pride, really.

And it was a matter of pettiness that he texted Tony twenty minutes later instead of obeying the order.  _ What is this? _

This, being a purposefully blurry snapshot of his laptop with the video open, taken at an obnoxious angle. He offered no other context.

Tony, it seemed, didn’t need it, but it took him a while to respond back. The bubble that indicated his message was in-progress stopped and started several times, as if Tony wrote something, thought better of it, and deleted it. Peter sank into his mattress, watching his phone idly as the slow-to-wake device crawled through all of its startup functions.

Tony finally worked out his response.  _ Just wanted you to memorize the faces of some new mentors.  _ And then- _ If this thing with the Guard retires the Avengers, I’m heading back to Malibu. You with me?  _

_ Hell _ .  _ No. _ Scowling, Peter texted him back.  _ How about you just buy me out of my contract like everyone else? _

Tony’s response was swift.  _ Oh? I had no idea you were breaking up with our eight-legged mutual friend. If that’s the case, I’ll buy you out tomorrow. _ In the chat, a bubble popped up with a new video.  _ But maybe you should tell HIM first. _

The new video was shaky, clearly taken by a cellphone. And, in it, Peter was running away from the black and green Guard, sliding over a wet taxi hood to do it. Peter grimaced at himself. He had thought he’d done pretty well, dodging the guy. But no retreat, no matter how strategic, ever looked cool or graceful. Peter was about to become another meme, he could feel it.

He watched it again, and then a third time. He was lightyears away from the version of himself who genuinely cared about widespread public ridicule, but something about the way he fled fed into all of his worst fears about Spider-Man. That he was a coward. That he was a fake. That he was just another criminal, running from the law.

Peter’s face scrunched up tight. He tossed the phone on top of the bed without responding to Tony’s text, ignoring the follow up chirps. He was quite happy to let the thing sit there until the battery died. Instead, he climbed under his blanket and laid down, balancing his laptop on his chest. He went back to looking up phobias again, trying to understand Otto’s cryptic warning.

It was a bizarre rabbit hole for sure. By the time Peter’s window abruptly pushed open, he was more than a little spooked. He jumped, sitting up, half-ready to use his laptop as a weapon against the bulky body pulling itself into his dorm without an invite.

Then Wade looked up, taking all of the wind out of his sails. He was dressed as a civilian, doubling up on a jacket and a hoodie over thick sweatpants—and he was  _ soaked _ . He had a grappling hook in one hand and a sheathed sword in the other. He also had a tightly tied plastic bag hanging from his teeth, and it was bulging.

Wade registered the look on Peter’s face. “I brought food,” he said thickly around the strap. Then, yanking it out, he said, “Didn’t you get my texts?”

Had some of those notifications been Wade? Feeling guilty, Peter set aside his laptop and started fumbling for his phone. The second he got it, though, Wade curled a cold, cold hand around his wrist, replacing the phone with a slightly smashed hamburger. When Peter looked up, Wade was smiling. “No biggie,” he said, tossing the cell towards the end of Peter’s bed. Then he shivered, jerking a thumb back at the window. “Mind if I stay until the rain lets up?”

“You can stay as long as you want,” Peter said with entirely too much raw honesty. Then reality kicked in. “…As long as you’re out by 11pm. My RA is a stickler about guests.”

It was probably the only thing Bobby Drake was a pain about. He was downright—shall he say— _ chill _ about everything else. Even when he pulled Peter aside about his frequent disappearances from the dorms earlier in the year, he did so while smothering a smile under his hand.  _ Just dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s, Parker, _ he said before ribbing Peter about his love life.

Only Peter hadn’t been dating at the time. Thank goodness his web of lies hasn’t led him to the ridiculous balancing act of publicly dating himself! Even he wouldn’t date Spider-Man. Peter had standards.

Standards that included Wade, who was beaming down at him.

He affectionately pawed at Peter’s head, pushing him back down on the bed when Peter tried to rise and be a good host. “Can I borrow some clothes?”

Peter barely got out a ‘yes’ before Wade started stripping, dropping his wet jacket to the floor first and then pulling his hoodie over his head. For a man who was as self-conscious as he was, Wade dropped his pants faster than anyone Peter knew. Maybe it was a military thing.

Feeling his ears burn, Peter nibbled on the edge of his burger silently, unable to pull his eyes away. Wade was quite a sight, even more so when he looked over his shoulder and winked, saucy to the bitter end. Peter blushed harder at getting caught and busied himself with the laptop instead, smearing ketchup over the screen in his haste. “Hey Wade, what do you think Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a fear of?”

Peter looked down at the screen again, sure he’d missed a syllable. Or ten.

“Fear of hippopotamuses,” Wade announced with unfound confidence. He’d found a tank top and a pair of running shorts Peter hardly recognized. They fit Wade but just barely. Peter was going to have a heart attack. Or a nosebleed. Or both. He was so weak.

“No,” Peter said absently, watching him walk over. “Fear of long words.”

“English. Man. What a language.”

Peter wanted to tell him it was mostly Latin’s fault, but Wade took that moment to slide into bed with him. There were several problems with this. One, a dorm bed was not meant for two grown men—a fact he’d lamented more than once. Two, all of that lovely skin on display was icy, icy cold. And three, Peter’s hand was still full of burger, and no burger—no matter how well constructed—could withstand someone like Peter white knuckling it to death.

Instant. Mess.

It took the work of a couple of minutes to straighten out all of these problems. Wade wasn’t much help, too busy snickering at Peter’s expense. But, soon enough, they were resituated so that there wasn’t a threat of Wade falling off nor was there a threat of Peter ruining his computer. Wade’s temperature, a much bigger concern, slowly started to rise too. Peter helped it along by throwing his leg over Wade’s—a touch so unbearable cold that Peter actually flinched. He also helped it by cocooning them both in the blankets and tucking himself as close as he could towards Wade’s torso. Wade stayed on his side throughout this, smiling faintly. When Peter was done, he nudged a little closer, burying his cold nose into Peter’s bicep.

Peter was left with a vague feeling of satisfaction. Here he was, back where he started—if not slightly more cramped. He had Wade at his side and his computer on his stomach. There was a listless bag on his desk full of more food when he wanted it. The rain continued, pouring white noise into the room. Between Wade’s growing warmth and the heat of his laptop, Peter was starting to feel distinctly sleepy. He thought about surrendering to it.

One of Wade’s hands, now closer to room temperature, palmed Peter’s thigh. The gesture wasn’t remotely sexual—just anchoring. Wade’s eyes were closing too. Peter rocked his head towards his, resting it on top of his skull, and Wade let out a deep sigh.

Oddly enough, it was this noise—content and happy—that made Peter’s eyes open again. Wade’s overtures (random visits and presents like today) had increased tenfold since their not-a-fight at his apartment. No matter how calmly he played it, Wade was clearly as spooked by what happened as Peter was, and it resulted in a change in behavior, and not just as Wade Wilson either.

Deadpool was changing tactics too. He was still going after Venom on a regular basis, but he was quicker to call it quits, no longer indulging in the extended fist fights he’d get into with Spider-Man. Peter, always paranoid, would have considered this as evidence that he’d been found out, if not for the way Deadpool blatantly chattered about his “problems at home” and about how his lack of a work-life balance was wrecking the “best thing that ever happened to him”.

He seemed to think Spider-Man would understand. “So, what do ya say, Spidey? Let me kill this guy, and I’ll go back to being a normal, civilian boyfriend to the love of my life.” To punctuate this, Deadpool had thrown out his arms energetically. “My future happiness lies in your hands!”

Peter had responded as he normally did in these circumstances—with silence and a web to the face.

And yet when Peter tried to talk to him normally and as a civilian, Wade deflected instantaneously, spinning every conversation away from future conflict like a ballerina flinging razorblades. The only time he yielded was when Peter tried to apologize for jumping on him that day.

And naturally, Wade tried to turn it into a joke. “But, baby, I love rough sex,” he had purred obnoxiously, slinking up to him like a cat in heat. Annoyed, Peter had just pushed his face away—and kept it there.

And it was there, cheek squished by the unrelenting wall of Peter’s palm, that Wade mumbled, “I just. Uh. Hate it when you’re mad at me. Makes me feel like you don’t like me.” Peter’s hand eventually fell, but Wade’s face had remained turned to the side all the same. “So be mean to me, but don’t hate me, and we’re Gucci and golden, Petey.”

Peter didn’t hate Wade. He didn’t think he could ever hate him. But if he ever succeeded at murdering Eddie, Peter wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Fortunately, Eddie was extremely good at running and hiding—and his possibly stolen Quirk was even better. It seemed to have a mind of its own when it came to keeping Eddie safe, which was for the best. The Guard might have been internationally trained, but Eddie sure wasn’t. He fought like a guy who’d only traded fists in a bar.

A ping and a buzz pulled Peter out of his thoughts. He set aside his laptop, sitting up and rummaging across the blanket to find his phone. This motion, unfortunately, woke up Wade. He remained flat, rubbing his eyes as Peter finally found—and grabbed—his prize.

Now that it was fully awake, Peter had tons of notifications from apps, Tony, various classmates, and, yes, Wade too. The newest one was from a group chat. MJ had dropped a video file in the chat. There was already a bubble forming of in-progress responses, multiple people getting ready to reply.

Peter opened up the video and watched. The scene was recent, given the rainfall, and the setting could have been any New York street. Whatever street it was, Peter didn’t have time to guess. The video started to the sound of concerned voices and terrified screaming. The first few seconds consisted mainly of a blurred sidewalk, focus swinging from left to right as if the person recording was running. Then the camera or phone was yanked up to car level, zooming into a scene happening at an intersection.

A car had skidded and hit a pole—a scene Peter was not unfamiliar with, given a city’s worth of impatient drivers and the hazards created by a sudden and unexpected rainfall. But instead of being approached by EMTs—or a certain helpful vigilante—the driver was confronted by one of the Guard. Unsettling by day, the eight-foot creature was nightmarish in the cold dark, and instantly transformed the interaction from a routine triage into a scene from the first Jurassic Park.

Peter held his phone close to his face. The video was taken from too far away to tell which of the Guard it was, but, whoever he was, he was barking orders harshly enough that it was heard even over the rain. When the driver didn’t comply, he ripped off the driver side door instead, hauling the person out by force and dragging him out into the street.

Peter didn’t see what happened next. Whoever was recording was approached by several militia-like Life Foundation agents, guns raised and expressions unfriendly. The video ended there.

“Holy shit,” Peter muttered.

Wade sat up at this, rubbing at his face. “What is it?”

Peter handed off his phone wordlessly, letting Wade see for himself. In the meanwhile, he pulled up his knees and hugged them tightly, nauseated in a way that had nothing to do with his earlier treat.

Wade’s face was lit up by the video, and it could have been carved in stone. Not a flicker of emotion passed over him, not even metal shrieked under the Guard’s brutal demand for obedience. After the video ended, he merely wet his lips and pushed the phone back to Peter. Then their eyes met.

Carefully, Peter said, “That isn’t right.” His phone started going off with more notifications, one every ten or so seconds.

“Sure,” Wade agreed easily.

Too easily. The tension in Peter’s shoulders wouldn’t release. He struggled for something else to say. “New York won’t accept the Guard.”

That was a matter of fact. Peter had faith in his neighbors. The way people had been speaking at the start of the video—concerned, worried, afraid, angry—was proof enough without the rest of it. New Yorkers wouldn’t tolerate the replacement of their local Heroes with something as heartless and merciless as the Guard.

But Wade was shaking his head. “You think this performance is for the civilians? Peter, they’re auditioning for the Central Hero Agency, not the public. Whine about taxpayer dollars all you want.  _ It doesn’t matter. _ The one with a handle on the purse strings is Pierce, not people like you, me, or even the guy in the video.”

“I thought they were replacing all of us,” Peter said faintly. His phone kept chirping. He moved his fingers over the volume button but didn’t press down. It vibrated against his palm.

Wade shrugged dismissively. “Just the parts that cost too much, which is all of the little people on the ground. Including me. Including  _ you _ , in a few months, if you get your license.” He started tugging at a loose string on Peter’s blanket. “Think about it, Petey. It’s just good business sense. Pro Heroes… we’re expensive. And there’s no guarantee that we’ll successfully do what we’re paid to do. Pro Heroes die quite often on assignment. Some of that’s just dumb fucking luck, but part of it is because many people slide through the ranks with powers that are far weaker than what their papers say. And people like Pierce let them succeed through bribery, nepotism, or pure spite.”

Peter thought of Flash.  _ Buzz. _ He thought of Harry.  _ Buzz. _ He thought of Tony and Rhodes too, even though they were examples of almost the exact opposite thing happening—so-called weaklings not only surviving but thriving and saving countless others.  _ Buzz. _

“These guys, though?” Wade said, voice deepening. “They’re different. If Pierce buys into what the Life Foundation is selling, he gets a highly trained anti-villain agency under his thumb. An agile squad with far fewer mouths to feed. A force that is armed with consistently powerful Quirks that match what’s on paper— _ and _ he gets to be known as someone who is tough on crime. What a great re-election slogan for his next campaign.” He looked up finally, hairless brows rising. “Plus, if he’s real nasty, he’ll charge the state the same amount he charges for thousands of us—claiming new equipment needs or some bullshit—and he’ll pocket the difference. And maybe Drake gives him a steep discount, and they  _ both  _ pocket the difference.” Sighing, he threw himself back down on the bed, folding his arms behind his head. “Who knows? Who cares? It’s the same shit everywhere. Corrupt people, as far as the eye can see.”

Peter tried to follow his logic, his point of view. He looked down at his phone again, sightless. “Pierce can’t buy into this,” he said slowly. “From a PR standpoint. This makes the Guard look bad. It makes them  _ all  _ look bad.”

A hand drifted over Peter’s back, pressing lightly. “You’d be surprised how deeply a video can get buried for the right price,” Wade commented over the continuing sounds of Peter’s phone. “I bet you a whole box of donuts that the victim in that video is gonna get charged with something like interfering in a Pro Hero’s line of duty or firing off a Quirk without a license. And if they’re not… well…” The hand lifted. “Maybe the Agency will have to do something. Censure the Guard. Slap them on the wrist. Void the contract. Something inconsequential so they don’t burn bridges with the Life Foundation. Either way, New York doesn’t win. So it’s best not to worry about it.”

“Not to worry about Pro Heroes acting as badly as super villains?” Peter countered softly. His traitorous mind jumped to Deadpool’s latest assassination attempt, and his gut twisted. He hugged his legs harder.

“It is what it is. This is what happens when you turn Hero-ing from a calling into an occupation. Bureaucrats and death panels and shady authority figures prowling the streets.”

Peter shook his head in response, but he said nothing. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Peter had always had issues with the way Pro Hero Society operated, assigning value to power rather than impact, but even they had this part of the work right. Pro Heroes were part of the fabric of their local community. They answered to the people. Always.

“This isn’t right,” Peter breathed.

Wade sat up again. Peter could feel his eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to look. After a moment, Wade sighed, then laid his cheek on the top of Peter’s head, wrapping an arm around Peter’s back. Then, very quietly, “I know your friend finds joy in poking beehives, and I know there isn’t anything you can do about that.”

Peter flinched and looked back down at his lit-up phone, still unlocked. Sure enough, the group chat was full of outrage rolling in. Wade had read it over his shoulder. ESU’s tension with itself had been pushed to the back burner, and the way MJ was going on, the newspaper was going to be mobilized—and it was going to be mobilized  _ hard _ .

Wade smoothed back Peter’s hair, pressing a kiss against his head. “But promise me you’ll keep your head down. Promise me you won’t mess with the Guard?”

His voice was earnest and familiar and kind. Helplessly, Peter turned to him, and Wade cupped his cheek. Peter pressed into it and kissed his palm. Satisfied, Wade hugged him again.

Meanwhile, Peter looked down at his phone again, thinking.

Wade was jaded about the world they were living in, and so was Peter. That was why they got along so well. They saw the world for what it was—rigged and cruel and stacked against the people who needed kindness and justice the most.

But if today proved anything, it proved that the only difference between the two of them was that Wade gave up. And Peter… he just wasn’t ready to.

Not yet.


	13. Chapter 13

Peter walked out of his last exam of his last class of the semester. He felt the faintest brush of relief. Then a big stack of glossy flyers shoved its way into his hands, dispelling that relief instantly. Standing in the hallway with students shoving past him left and right, he flipped the stack over, frowning down at the cheerful font looking up at him— _ Know Your Rights When You Get Arrested _ .

“Why are we getting arrested, again?” Peter asked Doreen, the messenger. His tone was desperate.

“For protesting, I guess.” Doreen shrugged. “Ask MJ. It’s not like I get to go. I have make-up exams.”

She seemed annoyed by that. When Peter failed to recognize her plight, she exhaled and walked off with a flick of her tail, leaving Peter behind as the proud papa of a bunch of flyers he neither recognized nor designed himself. After a moment, he hugged them to his chest, frowning. It was clear things had accelerated very, very quickly in the last few hours without his noticing.

Between final exams, trying to keep Wade from killing Venom, the stress of dodging the Guard, and the ever changing mood on campus, the whole week since that video had been a wild blur.

MJ had, as Peter expected, mobilized the paper and sent off an emergency issue within ten hours of the dropping of that video. It lacked the usual fanfare and structure MJ was so meticulous about. Instead, it did three things: it had summarized the known crimes committed by the Guard against the citizens of New York City. It stated that the future Pro Heroes of ESU would not tolerate this extended attack on the community. And, finally, it said their voices would be heard on a date set two days after Peter’s final exam.

In hindsight, Peter probably should have taken that date far more seriously.

He had no excuses. It wasn’t like he wasn’t in the room when MJ started sketching the outline of what it was going to look like. He was in the background, skimming over a study guide when MJ fired up Facetime, and a purple, three eyed law student—a friend of one of their writers—talked breathlessly about constitutional rights until her cheeks were blue. He was responding to some of their ruder emails when Betty burst in, crowing about all the permits she had successfully applied for. He was at his desk, editing a photo when MJ ran over the evidence they’d accumulated on the Guard so far.

Property damage. Injury. Intimidation. Harassment of witnesses. And a very long list of people who’d crossed paths with the Guard and never returned home. It was disturbing to hear that so many rumors about the Guard were gaining teeth and growing by the minute. It was certainly enough to get fired up against.

But Peter still didn’t think it would get as far as a protest—or a march, as it was now being called. Something was going to interfere. The Central Hero Agency was going to end the Guard pilot three weeks early and brush everything under the rug. All the permits were going to be denied. An older Pro Hero was going to tell them to knock it off. Their parents or guardians were going to scream them out. The teachers were going to threaten expulsion.

But none of that happened, least of all the threats from teachers. If anything, some of the teachers even seemed excited. McCoy himself was a perfect example. He had followed up MJ’s fiery emergency issue with an equally impassioned letter to the staff, the board, their donors, and the student body at large, condemning the actions of the Guard in the strongest possible terms.

Peter would hear him a day later, arguing on the phone with someone about being allowed to join his students on the proposed march. As he belted on about dignity and human rights (“-and the very  _ fabric _ of our fragile democracy, Richard-”), all Peter thought was that MJ and Dr. McCoy were more alike than anyone could have ever predicted.

McCoy came to them later that day, admitting he had been overruled. But he also promised that, if MJ designed the march to be a loop, he would greet the protestors with as much pizza and drinks as they could possibly consume.

“On me,” he said generously. Then his face furrowed. “Nothing alcoholic, however. This is still a dry campus!”

As far as the rest of ESU went, the other teachers and staff veered between neutrality and support. All Wanda would say to the affair was it was very nice, an opinion that seemed to convey a lot more to MJ than the rest of them could grasp. Pietro pestered, as he so often did, trying to needle MJ into scheduling it in any other time slot than what was allegedly “the best time of day for sleeping”. Visiting professor Shiro Yoshida chastised them for daring to have the energy for this in the middle of exam season, and Doom dismissed the protest entirely, merely commenting, “May the strongest win.”

Melissa Gold, so frequently distant with a large portion of her students, joined them and other new supporters in their office for protest planning sessions. When asked, she spoke nostalgically of her own time bucking authority. She shared just enough in those busy prep days that Peter eventually realized that she too was a Pro Hero who flirted with the other side of the law—and her time doing crime was a lot longer than Wade’s. Just less bloody. Peter wasn’t the only one looking at their raspy voiced teacher in a brand-new light.

All in all, their last pitch meeting of the year—sad and full of holes—was just a memory. There were so many people joining them in there now, it was being jokingly called the war room. But the war room wasn’t the only place where tensions were subsiding. Support Track students who had verbally eviscerated their Hero Track counterparts slowly reached out to their sister track counterparts, and Hero Track reciprocated, pulling their previously excluded classmates into everything from last minute study sessions to commuter agreements. No off-campus student should ever have to go home alone, they vowed. Not now. Even Hero Track students who were previously vocal in their hatred for MJ approached her now, humbly asking for information on how to participate in her march.

It made sense that Hero Track and Support Track would drop their grievances with one another. Regardless of what letter they’d been assigned on their papers, they’d all come to ESU for one purpose: to become their community’s next generation of heroes. If Pro Hero Society was to change, then so be it. Even Hero Track students could admit things weren’t entirely fair towards everyone involved, and those things were stacked in their favor!

But, if the last few weeks had proven anything, it had proved that the Guard was a poor inheritor of the responsibilities they all had towards the city and its citizens. There was no such thing as peace through fear.

At the same time, though, there was a wry awareness of the limitations of a single protest. People had been picketing the Life Foundation for months, and nothing had changed. Why would ESU’s march be any different? There was also the very real possibility that Pierce had made his decision already, and no “temper tantrum” run by college students was going to budge his thought process.

The march hadn’t even happened yet, and people were already talking about next steps. Petitions. Law suits. Rallies. Interviews. Ad space. More protests. And some other solutions Peter didn’t expect. For starters, Peter had never heard so many people float the idea of becoming a vigilante before. If this didn’t work and people were serious about their intentions, Peter was going to have a lot of new colleagues on the streets.

Tony would be absolutely pissed. But the movement ticked on.

There was one teacher Peter expected, above all others, to support this endeavor, if only to wax on about his own brilliance. But Beck stayed silent in the background, merely watching everything as it unfolded. On the last day of planning—eighteen hours before Peter’s last exam—he stood under the whiteboard in the war room, a pillar of motionlessness in a sea of activity.

Still not trusting him, Peter watched him subtly, even as he stapled literature together for MJ. Beck seemed to admire the plan that had been building from the ground up. His eyes moved slowly over MJ’s itinerary and the rough map of the march. It ended up being a loop, just as McCoy had suggested, extending several blocks away from the school before rounding back to it in a large oval. It would take them roughly forty-five minutes to complete it, and the weather promised to be calm that entire afternoon—sunny with a bit of a winter chill, but no rain or snow in sight.

“Disappointed how disorganized I am?” MJ had noticed Beck’s attention. She’d pulled away from another conversation to confront him, leaning against the white board with her arms crossed over her chest. In the din that was the office, their conversation went almost entirely unnoticed.

Peter watched them like a hawk.

“As always, Michelle, your perspective is cutting and precise,” Beck said, turning to her. Then he shrugged. “You win!”

“I wasn’t competing,” MJ replied caustically.

“Well, you won anyway.” Beck laughed, turning to the whiteboard again. He put his hands in his pockets, leaning back. “I won’t be teaching at ESU next year. You’ll be down a faculty advisor—again—but you’ll manage. I suppose.”

There hadn’t been an announcement. MJ looked as surprised as Peter felt. “I guess… I’m sorry to hear that.”

Beck scoffed at that. “No, you aren’t,” he said. He reached out, lightly skimming his fingers over the whiteboard without touching any of the words or the drawings. Then he knocked on it with a fist, facing her again. “I have a flight the day of your protest. I won’t be able to attend. But… I like the idea that I was on the ground floor of something with such a potential to be…” Beck paused, clearly trying to think of a word. “…historic.” He paused again, looking down at MJ’s frowning face, then he pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket. “Mind if I take a photo of this? And you and Peter, of course.”

He jerked a thumb at Peter, who was still watching, and Peter flinched. MJ’s eyes fell on him for a moment before turning back to Beck. Peter pushed away from the table of half-assembled literature, feeling the need to back her up somehow. Clearly, the answer was going to be ‘no’.

Beck kept talking. “A keepsake, if you will. My memory isn’t what it used to be, and I don’t want to forget this.”

“Oh, that’s nice!” a friendly voice chirped. Betty was squeezing by. Missing the context of the chat, she seemed to see an innocent scene: a teacher ready to take a photo of the two of them. She abruptly pivoted from her task, dropping a box of buttons on the closest table.

Then, with the speed of someone used to cheerfully taking photos, she grabbed both MJ and Peter’s elbows and pulled them close to her, instantly whirling them around so their backs were to the whiteboard and their faces were towards the camera.

It flashed before Peter could figure out how to hold his face. Looking sharply to the left at the girls, he had a feeling that, of the three of them, only Betty was smiling. When she turned that smile to MJ, MJ struggled to relax her expression into something friendlier for her friend. By the time Betty had picked up on what she’d stepped into, Beck had already disappeared into the crowd, leaving Peter with the same scraped raw feeling he got whenever someone had eyes or cameras on him while he was trying to switch back to Peter Parker from Spider-Man.

“It’s okay.” MJ was trying to reassure Betty that nothing was wrong, that the only problem there was that both she and Peter preferred to be behind the camera instead of in front of it. When Betty whirled around, peering up at Peter for confirmation of the innocent misstep, Peter gave it to her cheerfully, pushing the anxious feeling down as deep it would go.

He didn’t know why he didn’t like Beck taking a photo of him and MJ. He didn’t know why he liked that the whiteboard was in the shot even less. He let it go.

After all, it wasn’t like the protest was going to happen anyway.

Because while ESU might have been mobilizing and plotting, nothing halted the relentless march of time. Many students at ESU had early final exams and had headed home for the holidays. The school was already at half-staff, and the cut off day for staying in the dorms without a waiver was a day after the scheduled protest. The remaining students on campus were people like Peter, who had a late final, and others who had make-up exams. Altogether, there were maybe fifty people on campus, tops.

And maybe that would be the thing that stopped the march in the end—not enough people committing. Peter didn’t doubt MJ would march alone if she had to, but maybe she could be convinced to do something quieter. A rally on campus, for instance, would be far safer than marching on the street where the Guard could intervene.

But, given the stack of flyers in Peter’s hand, that didn’t seem likely either. It seemed even less likely to happen when Peter went to the war room, and nearly every person had a flyer, was talking about the protest, or was making plans for what to do immediately after it. By the time Peter reached the door, he had a throbbing, anxious headache. His eyes fell on MJ immediately. She was sitting at her desk, answering emails. He made his way to her immediately, glancing around the room.

The space had changed yet again since his last time in here. There were much fewer people inside—ten that he could count—and most of the desks had been pushed flat against the wall, creating space for a line and a sign-up table. MJ had made peace with most of her defectors, it seemed, because Theresa Cassidy herself was manning it, chatting with a bunch of freshmen about what to expect about the event in a few days.

Next to her were buttons, stacks of flyers and other literature, and snacks. Twinkling cheerfully at the end of those offerings were some cheap, programmable signs. The revolving text that usually insulted their rival sports competitor or shared increasingly painful puns about their own university mascot had been reprogrammed with slogans like  _ Police States Suck _ and  _ Where Are My Friends _ . Enterprising Support Track students usually sold these signs at $10 a piece to raise money for supplies and extra gear material. But now they were giving away their whole inventory for free.

Betty was standing next to the signup table, handing out these and the other materials out to everyone who signed up. She called out cheerful reminders to hydrate to a crowd of retreating students, then beamed when Theresa threw her a subtle thumbs up. Hardly anyone remembered she wasn’t an ESU student these days.

But the sign-up station wasn’t the only station in the room. Stretched out on the newly freed floor, making some traditional handmade banners was an odd group: Bobby Drake, two students Peter didn’t recognize, and, weirdest of all, Pietro himself. The egotistical bane of many of their existences had his long bangs pulled up in a ponytail on top of his head and his shirt sleeves pushed all the way up to his elbows. Instead of using the proximity of paint to attack his students in one of his increasingly convoluted lessons about always being alert, he was extremely focused on his brush, dragging it across paper one line at a time.

And, just beyond them, Ned sat at a computer facing a web camera in what looked like a very full video conference call. He had a massive pair of headphones over his head, and he was enthusiastically—if a bit loudly—listing all the ways that ESU students could help from home. According to him, the most famous of all ESU students, Jubilation Lee, had already committed to doing a live chat to her 6 million followers on her way back home to California that very night.

“And you can too. You don’t have to think of what to say either,” Ned was promising. He held up a flyer to the camera. “We can email you a list of talking points-”

“Great, you’re here,” MJ said, noticing his approach. Peter dragged his eyes away from Ned and back to her. “How’d your last exam go?” She’d paused in her work to ask him this, even lifting her fingers off of her keyboard. She seemed interested in hearing what he had to say too, which made Peter feel especially guilty about what came out of his mouth instead.

“I can’t go.”

He dropped the pile of flyers on the corner of her desk. Both of their hands went to the top of the stack when it threatened to spill over. MJ stood to get a better handle on it.

“What do you mean, you can’t go?” she said, clearly trying to understand. They straightened the pile together, then MJ settled back on her heels, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re our photographer. You have to be there. To document, if anything else. And what better angle to catch a protest than in that protest?”

Peter felt horrible. He was glad no one was listening.

Behind him, Betty was calling out into the hallway, trying to lure more people in! “This is it! This is the moment!” When this netted at least one new person, Theresa pulled what sounded like a party popper, dryly congratulating someone on being their tenth visitor of the day. When that student asked what their prize was, Pietro said, “Defenestration.” Easy laughter followed.

The contrast between the conversation Peter was stuck in and the conversation happening behind him was agonizing. MJ’s eyes were steady on him, waiting.

“I just… can’t go,” Peter repeated quietly. He felt the weight of her expectations on him, but heavier still was the expectations of others. Otto. Tony. Wade. Peter had been told repeatedly to keep his head down, and while he was fairly good at re-interpreting the intentions of others to fit his own worldview, even he had to admit there was no other way to interpret this march than as a red flag waving in front of a bull.

“Is it May?” MJ asked, leaning her hip against the corner of the table. “We’ve had a couple of people drop out because their parents weighed in, but… May is reasonable. I’m sure if you gave her the context, she’d-”

“I’m not going,” Peter said, too loudly. The chatter in the room died down a little. Peter could feel eyes on the back of his head. He stared down at his feet.

“It’s okay if you’re scared,” she said very softly. “A lot of us are. You think I want anywhere near one of those guys?” MJ smiled ruefully. “I hope and pray every single day that our march is uneventful. That we get our message out. That we are heard. And that we get back to ESU without a single confrontation. And the possibility of anything else, well… it keeps me up at night.”

At least one of them was thinking about it. Peter had pulled an ostrich, burying his head in the sand. He’d ghosted any thought of the march going on as firmly as he’d ghosted Harry—and he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to be like that anymore. Problems didn’t magically fix themselves when you ignored them.

But he didn’t have even a sliver of a thought on how to fix this without doing something erratic in hopes of distracting the Guard even a little. Maybe he could stage a bank robbery right when the march was going to start. Or he could pick a fight with the Avengers in the middle of Central Park with his very obviously unlicensed Quirk. Make a day of it, even. Thor would probably be down.

Or he could approach this problem from another angle entirely. He could burn MJ’s permits. He could swap their healthy snacks with laxative-laced cookies. He could pull a fire alarm at ESU before the march started and delay the proceedings. He could web up the auditorium they were going to congregate in with some of his new formula, and it would take hours for them to get out.

But none of that would stop them from rescheduling. Besides, if he did any of it, and MJ ever found out who was to blame, she would never talk to him again.

So Peter was just here.  _ Stuck. _

“It’s weird, though. Isn’t it?” MJ rolled a pencil over the top of her desk a few times, rocking it back and forth before turning to him, speaking even quieter. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been the one who says that it’s not the power of the Quirk that matters.” She hesitated, looking down. And then, with strength, she said, “You said it’s the  _ actions  _ that matter. The decisions. The choices we make.” By the end of this, she was gazing up at him hopefully.

But Peter said nothing. Gradually, MJ’s expression twisted. He couldn’t read it anymore. He used to be able to predict her next thought by the angle of her mouth or the height of her raised eyebrow. But this expression was inscrutable to him. When did they grow so far apart?

“Are you mad at me?” Peter asked and instantly hated himself for it. What a juvenile question.

Her eyes jumped back up to him, her face briefly incredulous. Then she visibly gave up, shrugging. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me.” She looked around the room. “We got all this way in the planning process, and I never once questioned whether or not you were on board.” In that long sweeping glance over the space, MJ seemed to come to a quick decision. She nodded once, expression gloomy.

MJ made eye contact with him and forced a distant smile. She moved away from the desk. “Have a nice winter break, Peter. I’ll see you in January.” She clapped Peter’s arm and then walked past him, heading for the door.

Peter turned and watched her exit. He saw Betty pause, looking at Peter and then at MJ’s retreating back. Shouting out an excuse to Theresa, she dropped everything to chase after MJ.

Like a friend would have. Like Peter should have.

Instead, he turned his back against the room, leaning on her desk as he mentally battled over roaring priorities.

Self-preservation. Guilt for opting out. Loyalty to his friends. Shame for sitting on his hands.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of what could happen during the march. Fear of the Guard itself-

A hand touched his shoulder. Peter jumped and whirled around, expecting to be yelled at or ripped into for his cowardice.

But it was just Ned, his hands raised in peace. When Peter calmed down, moving past his initial jerk, Ned’s hands fell slowly. Peter had a hard time meeting his eyes, but when he did, he saw nothing of the scrutiny he expected. Just concern and Ned’s usual brand of kindness.

“Hey, so, that video conference kinda took a lot out of me.” Ned rocked his head towards the door. “Wanna go on a walk?”

-

They sat on a bench at the edge of the quad. It was mostly dirt and concrete now, save for a couple stubborn spots where grass refused to die under the combined assault of cold snaps, frost, and even light snowfall. They were due another winter storm, but, as of yet, there was no sign of it. Sunny days and cold temperatures were forecasted all the way up until next week—as for what happened after that, who knew? The weather was fickle, and even a Quirk could only predict it so far.

On that note, some students in his dorm were lightly pestering Bobby Drake about whether or not they could expect a white Christmas. Even though that wasn’t the way his Quirk worked, Bobby tolerated it with good humor. After all, it was playful now. Just weeks earlier, the jokes had been mean and full of barbs. Someone even pinned a meanspirited job opening on the door of Bobby’s dorm. It was at an ice rink, and whoever pinned it wrote PLAN B in all caps.

Peter didn’t know if they ever figured out who did it, and he didn’t know his RA well enough to ask. He didn’t really know anyone here as much as he should have after three and a half years.

No one but his closest pals, and he didn’t have a great track record with them either, did he?

Peter sighed, rubbing at his cold ear. “I’ve been a bad friend, haven’t I?”

Ned paused. They’d been competing to see who could make the larger plume of air with a single exhale. So far, Peter’s went further, but Ned’s grew and grew. Ned was quite smug about it. But he paused when Peter spoke, and he considered his words carefully.

“Eh, when aren’t we all.” He shrugged as the last evidence of their breath disappeared. “Granted, you are a chronically distractible space case with poor communication skills-”

Peter interrupted him. “I think I hurt MJ.”

Ned let that linger in the air. Then, slowly, he said, “MJ will get over it. She just…” He held off on finishing his thought before saying, “She sees this as a crowning moment for her, you know? For a momentum you both shared. That push for truth and equity. That disruption of the status quo. That necessary critique of authority.” The newspaper, Peter thought with shame. Ned scratched his chin. “Honestly, I think she would have taken your decision better if you tried to explain it to her-”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Peter blurted out, leaning forward. “We should be keeping our heads down. We should be staying low to the ground. Out of sight.”

Ned grunted, pulling at his scarf. “Uh, where have you been? Our entire career path strictly involves us doing the exact opposite, bro.”

“Must have missed that part of class,” Peter said dryly.

Ned was shaking his head. “Besides, that’s so unlike you. If you think this whole thing is really so dangerous, you wouldn’t just bow out and leave us to our imminent doom.”

“I know,” Peter bemoaned, “and it’s bothering the hell out of me.” He covered his face with his hand.

Ned stretched out his arms across the back of the bench. “I guess I should thank you for not sabotaging us.”

“I thought about it,” Peter said earnestly, turning towards him. “I really did.”

This was not even remotely funny, or so Peter thought. But Ned laughed, and he laughed at Peter’s face. Gradually seeing the humor in it, Peter did too, groaning, “…She would have murdered me so bad.”

“So bad,” Ned echoed, still chuckling. Then a moment passed. Then another. And another. And then, quietly, seriously, Ned said, “I guess I just don’t see you not being there. But if that’s your choice, that’s your choice, and I respect it. MJ will come around too.” Ned looked over at him and offered a fist to bump. “And if she doesn’t, I’ve got your back.”

Peter looked at Ned’s clenched hand for a moment before knocking their knuckles together. “Thanks,” he said, appreciating it. “Though I don’t feel as if I deserve that right now.” Peter turned back to the quad, pensive.

And he wasn’t the only one who surrendered to thoughts, it seemed. Ned looked out too, humming musingly to himself. Peter hoped Ned’s contemplation was more fruitful than his own.

They sat there together in silence, shoulder to shoulder on the bench overlooking the quad. There was sparse foot traffic near them. Most stuck to paths, not willing to chance it on a patch of deceptive mud, hunched in on themselves as they tried to traverse from building to building as fast as they could, chasing the heat. Peter himself was also starting to long for the warmth. The cold of the sunny but still wintry day was starting to pierce his layers of clothes—and yet, Peter didn’t particularly want to move.

Then, out of nowhere, Ned broke their long, companionable silence with one very odd question: “Do you remember what they used to call us in elementary school?”

“Nednpet,” Peter said instantly. “Flash was pretty obnoxious about it. He even got the teachers to start doing it.”

“Yeah, that was shitty,” Ned said with the easy acceptance of someone who had already forgiven a transgression. “Do you know what my nickname was before we met?”

Still looking out over the quad, Peter shook his head. Ned had always been Ned to him.

“Old Man Feet Leeds.” This bizarre response made Peter’s head snap immediately back to him. Ned was smiling sheepishly. “Blame my cousins, they came up with it. They thought my Quirk smelled like the menthol cream that my grandfather put on his feet. They thought it was so clever. And that my Quirk was so boring. Old Man Feet Leeds, and his old man Quirk.” His expression warmed with nostalgia. “Then this kid came into my life, all scuffed up, his eyes as big as dinner plates.  _ Here we go, _ I thought. Old Man Feet 2.0. I was ready to be bullied once again.” His small smile turned into a grin. “But when I activated my Quirk around him for the very first time, he said I smelled like Christmas and that my Quirk was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.”

“That was me,” Peter said, realizing.

“That was you,” Ned agreed. “And it’s silly, but… it meant the world to me. Even if you never did another nice thing for me, that alone is enough for me to have your back.” Peter shook his head, starting to deny it, but Ned overruled him. “And it wasn’t just that, Peter! Everything I did with you since, every memory we shared-”

“Even ESU?” Peter challenged. It was Betty, after all, who had told Peter that Ned had come to ESU because of him.

But Ned was smiling, practically shining. “Especially ESU,” he insisted. “I’ve met so many cool people. I’ve seen so many cool things! I have so many ideas for stuff, you have no idea… Plus, I got to help people. I even got to save a girl that I really like…” He trailed off, almost bashful. Then he abruptly pushed off of the bench, leaving Peter behind. But he didn’t go far, facing him—standing to Peter’s seated pose.

Ned flatted a hand on his chest, looking painfully earnest. “Everything I’ve done with you—since meeting you—has totally been worth it. So if you’re having a hard time… If you’re dealing with some personal stuff… If you have other things in your life you don’t want to share with me… it’s okay! Even if it’s not great or if you’re ashamed of it or if it’s illegal-”

Oh god, how much of Peter’s double life as Spider-Man had Ned picked up over the years?

“-I’ve already decided! There’s pretty much nothing you can say that will change the fact that you’re my best friend.”

Peter had half smothered his own face with his palms during this impassioned spiel. He felt embarrassed. Humbled. Ashamed. Even a little shy.

“…You sure about that?”

“I have had a lot of time to think about this,” Ned said, far too gravely. He pinched the air. “There is a very, very small sliver of things I won’t accept from you.” Satisfied, he sat back down again on the bench with enough force to make it rattle.

“I’m actually afraid to ask,” Peter said with a laugh, knowing how Ned’s mind worked. Ned seemed pleased by that. 

They sat like that for several more minutes, lapsing back into a calm silence. They both watched a small group of students hustle their way back into one of the two dorm buildings. The light caught on promotional buttons for MJ’s march, which were proudly clipped on everything from hats to jackets to backpacks.

Peter’s mind was starting to settle. All the noise that had distracted him this last week was dissipating under the comfort of a promise. He could see the path forward. But he had a promise of his own to make.

“One of these days,” Peter said slowly, “I’m going to tell you a lot more about what’s been going on these last four years.” Peter thought of Spider-Man. “Hell, the last ten. Just… don’t hate me for it. Whatever you do.”

“It’s a deal,” Ned said.

They looked at each other, then they sealed it with their special handshake. The familiar ritual put a smile on Peter’s face and a light in his heart.

Maybe everything would be okay after all.

-

Steve Rogers scanned the area around ESU’s auditorium evenly, his expression intense. He was dressed in civilian clothes again. While they tended to soften him, they didn’t today. He looked every bit of his Pro Hero persona, even without his telltale uniform and shield. He was more soldier than man at the moment, scanning for threats, identifying exits, and memorizing faces.

And, despite the fact there was no movement, his attention abruptly jumped up to the roof where Peter was crouched above him, his sharp blue eyes narrowing in the light. Peter fought the urge to hide, tugging on the bottom of his mask fitfully. Then he did a stupid little wave, trying to radiate friendliness. This did nothing but make Steve frown even more deeply.

He stared at Peter unblinkingly for a little while longer before jerking his head off to the side. He walked in the direction he’d indicated, and Peter scrambled to follow, feet sliding against the slick top of ESU’s science building. He found the edge of the roof and dropped off silently, landing in front of Captain America out of sight of the rest of the crowd growing around the auditorium.

Voices rose in the distance, amplified by megaphones and at least one person with a sound Quirk. Music played softly.

It was march day.

“None of the school’s defenses are triggered by you,” Steve said in lieu of a greeting.

Peter cringed at the implication of that, not sure where to begin. A bulk of the defenses of ESU lied in the responses by staff and teachers, not in physical security systems. What systems they had, he’d had almost four years to get acquainted with—the alarms on the roofs, the sightline of many cameras, and the mysterious occult hazards Doom left lying around.

“I’m not trying to cause any trouble,” he said instead.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “Then why are you here?”

That question was almost harder. Peter shouldn’t have been there at all. He should have been at Aunt May’s, unloading his bags at her doorstep before they got ready for the holidays. He should have been distracting Wade from further Deadpool shenanigans. He should have been critically weighing whether or not to return to ESU for his next—and last—semester.

But Ned was right at the end. He couldn’t see Peter not being at the event, and neither could Peter. What was the point of saving his own hide if his friends were still in the line of danger? Besides, Uncle Ben let himself get shot point blank in the chest to save others from dying. He would have been at this protest too. And, at the end of the day, Peter was willing to re-interpret the promises he’d made to both Otto and Wade.

Peter Parker would not be at the event that may or may not drop the full wrath of the Guard on their heads. Spider-Man, on the other hand…

Well, Spider-Man was waiting too long to answer Captain America’s question. Clearly.

“No one is saying you can’t practice your constitutional right to protest,” Steve said, almost stiffly. “But you being around will… complicate things.”

“How so?”

Steve was as still as a statue, an imposing one with muscles and legs for days. It was remarkable, the difference between his body language with Spider-Man now, and when he was with Peter without a mask in the past. Being attached to Tony really had afforded him some liberties when they first met. Peter guessed he should just feel lucky that Steve’s reaction to the sight of him now was to talk to him in private rather than knocking him on his ass in the name of justice.

“I guess you vigilantes didn’t get the memo.”

“Oops!” Peter said. “My bad. I unsubscribed to all the Pro Hero newsletters last year. Self-care, you know? Plus, you would not  _ believe  _ the state of my inbox-”

Steve ignored all of that. “The Guard has five goals they’re trying to achieve by the end of the year.” When Peter just shrugged at that, the indent between Steve’s eyebrows deepened. “They’ve made four of them already.”

“Good for them,” Peter said, waving a hand. “I’ll send them a plaque. What does any of that have to do with me?”

“Their fifth and final goal has to do specifically with vigilantes, smart ass,” Steve retorted. This caught Peter’s full attention. “They’ve claimed that incidental vigilantism will drop by 60% by the time the year is through, and that chronic vigilantism will drop to zero. Three guesses how they’re managing  _ that _ .”

Peter didn’t have to guess. He knew so few of his fellow rule breakers. Most people dipped their toes into vigilantism only once or twice. To top it off, there was a blurry line between legally protected Good Samaritan behavior and its illegal counterpart.

Vigilantes had short careers for a whole hoard of reasons, ranging from incarceration to recruitment to even death. Peter was probably the longest running vigilante in the city. He could only think of one other, an unstoppable man few people got along with.

He dropped his name anyway. “The Punisher.”

“Captured last week,” said Steve. “It didn’t make the papers. Obviously.” He tipped his head up challengingly. “And that’s a problem for the Guard. If they’re going to meet their other goal, they’ll need to make a public example. And you’re the only one in town who fits the bill.”

Silence followed this statement. Dread filled Peter slowly until it was all he was aware of. There was no quip or joke that was going to deflect him from the reality of this. He swallowed harshly, turning away. His hand clenched by his hip. It wasn’t like he didn’t know they were after him. He just thought their pursuit of him was incidental. Like chasing a purse snatcher after you watched them try to make a sticky-fingered payday.

But it was intentional, and that was far more terrifying. Peter had been specifically hunted only a small handful of times, and every time made him seriously consider shredding his suit and going into accounting instead. But none of his previous pursuers were quite as physically terrifying as the Guard.

He didn’t want to imagine how they were going to use him to complete their agenda. This was not the example he was meant to be. He was sure of it.

“But… you are very hard to catch,” Steve said, slowly continuing. “Not only are you fast, you don’t seem to carry a phone on you anymore.” That was true. Peter stopped when he realized how the Life Foundation was using the data. “But luck only goes so far, Spider-Man.”

Peter rolled his shoulders fitfully. “What do you guys care anyway?” he said bitterly. “Good riddance, right? Maybe the Guard will do you a solid and put my arrest on Pay Per View.”

“You have more people in your corner than you think.” Peter shot Steve a look of pure disdain, an effect that was admittedly muted by his mask. Either way, Steve was unimpressed. “Two weeks ago, all of the Central Hero Agency’s files on you were deleted. To date, not a single Pro Hero that specializes in investigation has cooperated with them to find you, and all sightings of you are being officially attributed to other Pro Heroes. Even by those Pro Heroes themselves!” Steve was exasperated. “The Fantastic Four appealed to the Central Hero Agency to strike your name from the Guard’s list—and even though they lost, they’re already starting to build your defense case for when you get arrested.”

“If,” Peter said doggedly.

“ _ When _ ,” Steve retorted. “You’re not taking the heat on you seriously enough. Hell, you’ve got  _ bounties _ on your head right now. Did you know that?”

No, he hadn’t known that at all. Besides the messes he himself had stepped in, his last couple of weeks had been almost peaceful. Had he really just been going to school all this time, oblivious about the axe hanging over his neck? A chill ran down Peter’s spine.

“A couple Pros in the area snatched them all up and are sitting on them as we speak—and trust me, you haven’t outsmarted them too. If Black Widow, Silver Sable, or, hell,  _ Deadpool  _ wanted to bring you in, you wouldn’t even see them coming.”

Peter wished Steve would stop talking. He hung his head, rubbing at the bridge of his nose through his mask. Even  _ Wade _ took up a bounty on him? He would have had so many opportunities to follow through. But he’d never said a word about it. It hadn’t slipped out even once—and Deadpool had been _ excessively  _ chatty with him. About relationships. About responsibilities. About the job in front of him that he swore would finally let him have a “clean break with a shitty employer”. Peter should have listened a little better or found a way to ask questions. 

Steve was shaking his head. “There’s even a rumor that one of the Guard is a fan and has been sabotaging efforts on their end, but who knows if that’s true. In any case, all you have going for you is dumb luck and a community of people trying to cover your ass. Don’t risk it all by attending this today. I know it’s important. But just…” He paused, then shrugged. “Go home.”

Go home. Don’t mess with the Guard. Keep your head down.

Peter looked down a little longer. Then he smiled sheepishly behind his hand. Man, it was like none of these men knew him at all.

Peter peeked at Steve through the gaps of his fingers. “Cap,” he said steadily, “I didn’t become a vigilante to be  _ safe _ .”

Steve jerked at that, eyes widening. Then he huffed out a small laugh. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed at his jaw, a faint hint of color emerging on his cheeks.

Peter had a moment to spare to consider why Captain America himself would look embarrassed and uncomfortable while trying to chase off a vigilante from attending a protest. Then it suddenly clicked. He pointed at Steve. “Sir, you’re not supposed to be here either!” he accused, outraged. Steve didn’t deny it. “Ha! Well, I’m rubber and you’re glue-”

“Do not,” Steve said flatly. Warningly.

Peter wisely retreated from the elementary school rhyme. “Why are  _ you _ even here? Everything that applies to me applies to you.” Captain America getting vilified for acts of alleged vigilantism would land much harder than similar stories about little old Spider-Man.

“I was invited by the march organizer,” Steve said, peeved. “Also, it does not apply. I didn’t lose my rights to protest when I signed on to the Avengers.  _ And _ I’m not a vigilante.  _ And _ I don’t have bounties on me.  _ And _ -”

Peter threw up his hands before Steve could list out even more differences between the two of them. “Okay, okay. Sheesh. But you said it yourself. They want to make an example to threaten and intimidate people to stay in line. And what better person to target for that than you? You’re gasoline on a fire. You’re a  _ threat _ . To their employment. To their way of functioning. To the narrative they keep spewing out-”

“Yeah. I’m a threat,” Steve interrupted. “But I’m not a threat that these kids aren’t already posing by going public like this. If anything, I’m a shield.” He looked left and right, then stepped closer to Peter, losing his stiffness. “The Guard is framing their actions as an operational misstep.” His voice was low, pitched intentionally to remain unheard. “They are claiming to be outnumbered and overrun, and that their strategy thus far has been to detain and arrest everyone involved in a scene. They then let the investigative process figure out who was really innocent and who was guilty. They admit there was issues, but they’re claiming that they’re learning, and they point to the fact that they’ve let most of the people they’ve grabbed off without any charges...”

“But some of them aren’t coming home,” Peter said urgently.

A hard glint appeared in Steve’s eyes. “That’s right. Some of them don’t come home. And worse, there’s no information about them. No booking, no files, no recordings. Nothing. They completely disappear.”

“And the last time they’re ever seen, they’re in the Guard’s custody.”

“Yes,” Steve said firmly. “I  _ need _ to find out what happens to them. Why do some people make it to the prison and others don’t?”

“And, to do that, you need to get arrested,” Peter guessed.

Steve nodded. “I need to get arrested,” he agreed.

Peter was buzzing with something close to excitement. It was empowering, standing with Steve like this. The topic of conversation was so grim and unwanted, but they were on the same page. A Pro Hero and a vigilante were together, shoulder to shoulder instead of fist to fist in this one instance. By allying with Steve, Peter was gifted with both a potential insider’s look into what the hell happened at a Life Foundation private prison and the possibility that, with Captain America in the room, the Guard might be on their best behavior and leave his friends alone.

But the longer Peter looked at Steve, the more he became aware of one small fact: Steve, for all his efforts, had come alone.

When he realized that, Peter’s stomach sank. He felt like they were right back where they started. “I- isn’t that enough?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer. “People are disappearing. Civilians are being menaced for no reason. Neighbors are being dragged through a traumatizing detainment process for the sake of expediency.” He clenched his hands. “Isn’t that enough for Pro Heroes to act? Regardless of the consequences?”

He wanted to believe that Pro Hero Society was worth saving and that its problems could be solved. But what worth was there saving a burning house if the foundation was rotten to the core?

Steve avoided his gaze, his jaw tense. “…We had a vote,” he admitted eventually. “The other agencies and the Avengers… we got together and had a vote to work out what our response was going to be. It had to be united, otherwise we’d get dismissed. But consensus takes… time.”

Peter’s heartbeat throbbed in his head. “Are you  _ kidding _ me?”

“No one thinks what the Guard is doing is right,” Steve countered quickly, mouth flattened. “But taking that belief and turning it into action is a whole different beast. The thing you gotta understand about Pro Heroes is that a lot of them have been burned doing exactly what you want them to do now. A lot of them have lost friends and loved ones and  _ whole careers _ because they jumped into a situation without having the facts.” Peter rubbed the back of his skull irritably, looking anywhere but at Steve. “But trust me, we  _ are _ following what the Life Foundation has been saying very closely. We  _ are _ pushing for a full and transparent investigation, one that is not impeded by the badly timed actions of a bunch of hot heads. We want to wait and watch, gather all the evidence we need, and then-”

“Then why are you here?” Peter cut in.

Steve stopped. He visibly struggled. Watching him, Peter felt as if he had caught Captain America in his bullshit not once, but twice in a single conversation—and Steve knew it.

Finally, he caved. “I’ve never been a sit and wait kind of person,” Steve admitted.

“Well, neither have I. So, Cap, what are we supposed to do?”

Before Steve could say anything else, a megaphone announcement called all participants to report to the auditorium for some final words. Peter turned to it automatically, getting half a step off before Steve’s hand clamped over his shoulder. It was a brief touch, but enough to still him.

“Don’t join us on the ground. No one ever looks up. Stay on the rooftops,” Steve said, walking past him. “If I’m gonna be their shield, you  _ have _ to be their eyes. When I too am detained, I’ll only be able to see so much. I’m counting on you to make sure everyone goes to the same place.”

A part of Peter thrilled in such clear marching orders. A bigger part of him was crushed at the implications, at the weight of the responsibility thrown on his shoulders. “What am I supposed to do if they don’t?!”

“You’ll figure it out.” Steve paused by the corner of the building. Then he looked at Peter fully, smiling. “Hey, I never got the chance to say this, but…” He nodded at Peter. “Nice upgrade to the suit. You’re looking very heroic these days. We’ve noticed.”

While Steve left, heading back to the auditorium, Peter looked down at himself. He’d spent so much of his time on the streets in badly sewn sweatpants and coke bottle goggles. His suit now was sleek, form fitting, and flexible, built to withstand punishments. It was the best of them so far, and a sure winner for Melissa Gold’s coveted extra credit points, unlike the misshapen, yellow monstrosity he’d turned in as his final.

He’d used everything he’d ever learned at school to make himself a better vigilante, but late nights in the gear workshop often had him wondering if he had betrayed his rebellious roots in exchange for a false sense of safety.

But this was the first time he’d looked down at himself without a doubletake. Everything he saw—his web shooters, the red webbing against accents of blue, the gleaming spider on his chest—it was all him. Not some poser, some fake, some hack.

It was just him. It had always been him. Maybe he’d never lost anything in pursuing a Pro Hero license after all.

A gasp made his head snap up. A freshman with snakes for hair had walked around the building, spotting him instantly. After gasping, the kid pressed up against the corner, half-hiding behind it.

“Hi, Spider-Man,” the boy said shyly—and quietly, thank goodness.

“Hey, kid,” Peter said, awkwardly saluting him. “Uh, I’ll be off. Have a good march.”

“Thanks!” the boy said proudly, fangs bared. “It’s my first!”

-

The march was, by many definitions, a resounding success.

Far more people than MJ’s hopeful guess of fifty people joined the cause. In actuality, it was closer to two hundred. Peter was surprised how many people he recognized—students and civilians alike. Every time he scrutinized the crowd, he recognized another face.

Like Marco, for instance. He’d never grown back the needles he lost at that strange and hostile bar, which told Peter that the bully’s Quirk was more a physical mutation—quills, perhaps—than the flying shards of death that he pretended they were. At one point, Marco and MJ saw each other, recognized each other, and mutually opted to ignore each other. Walking away from her, Marco even seemed embarrassed. Maybe there was hope for the guy after all.

There was a disappointing void of Pro Heroes at the march, but Captain America was well received. He mingled with the participants easily, doing everything from chit chatting with the person next to him to leaning over the iron fence the city had set up to do a quick Q&A with an opportunistic reporter in a passing taxi.

The unmanned iron fence made Peter feel uneasy. He’d been to parties and rallies before with such obstructions, and there was always a police officer or two around, keeping an eye on things. It reminded him of how much they’d been abandoned for this little experiment, and that the Guard had taken over the role of both superhero and police officer. It had failed at both.

Despite Peter’s moody musings, the march itself was remarkably upbeat. There was singing and chanting almost the whole way. Even MJ seemed to perk up about halfway through. Steve stayed closest to her throughout the march, listening as she talked mostly with her hands. When the hands got especially exuberant—Peter could recognize a venting MJ from a mile away—Steve got a strange look on his face. He stepped a foot closer to her, muttering something in her ear.

A second later, MJ’s head shot up, and she made direct eye contact with Peter. Her tired, tense face lit up instantly. From his perch on a billboard, he flashed her a cheeky peace sign before dropping off and swinging further ahead.

Things continued to go well after that, and the good vibes weren’t contained by iron fencing. No, it was contagious, and they had an audience. Some watched passively from opposite ends of the street or from the height of fire escapes or behind the glass of their windows. Others blatantly cheered them on, waving or shouting or taking photos. There was almost a constant din of beeps, and not from drivers annoyed at the loss of half of the street, but by those responding to numerous  _ Honk if You Give a Damn _ posters flashed by Peter’s classmates.

They had a small following of the press too. Between the reporters, photographers, and the live streamers from inside the march, MJ’s message was spreading.

The Guard wasn’t welcome in New York City. At all. End of report.

But all good things come to an end. The Guard rolled up about thirty minutes into the march, blocking off their momentum. Still, the straggling end of the march continued forward until they were all bunched up against the barrier that the Guard had put up across the entire street. Warning lights flashed from the buses they brought in, and a small army of Life Foundation agents systemically emptied out the rest of the street on the other side of the iron fence, including drivers and their cars.

All the joy sapped out of the event, like a plant withering from neglect in a time lapse. A moment later, all cell phones were bricked, a fact Peer only picked up on when a shout of dismay went through the crowd. This was hardly the kind of circumstance that required the use of that equipment, and it was… convenient. Especially given the threats that the agents were leveling at their audience. After all, a bricked phone only showed emergency broadcast information. There was little to no access to any other kind of apps, especially the ones that could help document what was going on.

This wasn’t helped by the actions of the red Guard. The man was lounging casually on the hood of a bus while playing a loud game of Fortnite on his reinforced phone, drawing attention to the fact that, once again, Pro Heroes were largely exempt to their own rules.

Peter jerked and jumped the rest of the way up a fire escape, flinging his legs over the roof just in time to see two more Life Foundation agents come out of someone’s apartment. Oblivious to his presence, they set up shop where he’d just been standing, armed with sniper rifles and watching the crowd below. He fought the furious impulse to knock their heads together. Who brought sniper rifles to a protest set up by college students?

Soon, all that was left in the street were the marchers. Even the watchers in the upper apartments had vanished, hiding deeper in their homes. Press had reassembled, louder than ever, behind a new partition at the end of the street. Life Foundation agents ordered them back repeatedly, and there was already some chatter buzzing back and forth on their radios about setting the partition even farther out and away from the scene. This too seemed awfully convenient. They were already so far away.

Peter stayed as close to the edge of the roof as he dared, eyes darting up and down the street. He was supposed to be their eyes, but there was so much he needed to watch. It was hard enough trying to keep track of his friends. MJ’s free hanging curls blended into many of the coats on display, and Ned was wearing the same ESU beanie as at least twenty others in the crowd. At least Betty’s hat—with its two pom-poms that looked like bear ears—was highly visible.

This was like the worst game of Where’s Waldo ever. Especially when MJ and Steve pushed to the front of the crowd, meeting an approaching Riot at the iron fence that kept them penned in on one side of the street.

Press aside, it was so, so quiet now. Even the normal sounds of the city seemed muted in the distance, though his heart seemed thunderously and unforgivably loud. Peter’s hearing sharpened. He could just barely pick up on Steve’s voice some ten stories above ground. 

There was talk of a permit—of many permits—and constitutionality. MJ’s voice, harder to hear, was high and tense as she detailed all the ways that they had made sure the march was legal. Next to her, Steve stood strong, like a pillar that would defy even time itself. The fact that he was two feet shorter than Riot didn’t seem to matter one bit.

But Riot was unmoved. Peter couldn’t hear his words at all, but the rumble of them made his hair stand on end, and on the street, people were shrinking back, bunching towards each other or the walls behind them to get just a little more space between them and the giant Quirk user.

“…I guess we’ll see you in court,” Steve was saying.

The Life Foundation agents moved forward, and orders were thrown at the assembled crowd. Things happened quickly thereafter. The iron fences were taken down, and the protestors were corralled into groups. A bus was pulled in, and zip-tied protesters were made to enter one after another.

Concrete crumbled to dust under Peter’s hands as he watched from above. He tried to remember that the whole point was to get arrested. The whole point was to be  _ detained _ . MJ had warned everyone and educated them on what to expect. They were prepared for this.

So Peter’s heart really had no right to squeeze in agony just then. But squeeze it did.

Steve was the first one to enter in the very first bus, and when his bus left, Riot left to follow it. At least Steve’s plan was working so far, Peter thought, reaching under his mask to wipe off his face. Captain America was about to be a VIP pain in their ass, and if anything went wrong, Carlton Drake was going to have a hard time spinning it into a positive.

The red Guard, in Riot’s absence, seemed to take charge. He slunk off the hood of the remaining bus and started barking orders. The pecking order here seemed obvious. All Life Foundation Support personnel were beneath those wearing the exoskeleton Quirks, and Peter shouldn’t have expected any different.

His orders seemed entirely nonsensical—even capricious. What groups had been formed under Riot’s supervision were pulled apart, shoved together, and reorganized. No one had more than five minutes to sit or stand in peace before they were being moved somewhere. It seemed completely random. In fact, the only consistency in it was the space the Guard kept putting between each group. Before, there were mere inches. Now, there were full meters. An attempt to keep them from conspiring?

Then a voice floated up from the fire escape. “Goddamnit. This shit again? Man, why did we get left with the fucking psycho?”

“Shut up,” said his partner, voice tense.

He didn’t, in fact, shut up. “He’s the worst. Just the worst. Riot is freaky, but at least he’s got his shit together. Anti-Venom and Hobgoblin are okay when they’re alone. But  _ Carnage _ -” 

“Do you have a death wish?” his partner hissed with rage. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Or I’ll kill you before he does.”

The protestors continued to be loaded into buses. Like Peter, the Guard had clearly underestimated how many people would show up. Not only did they not have enough buses, they also didn’t have enough zip-ties. They only used these restraints on people right before they walked into the bus, which was ludicrous. Two buses had left already, and a third was rolling in. The press partition had been pushed back even further now, but more people were bravely creeping closer to the scene. Faces appeared in windows now, and Peter could see a handful of people on a lower roof, peering over as sneakily as they could.

Despite being at the front of the fence, MJ was a victim of the random remixing. She had yet to be loaded on a bus but had serendipitously been grouped up with both Ned and Betty. From that point on, they seemed to do their best to stay together.

Another bus, another shuffle of people. MJ and Ned’s section got corralled next to an empty store front. Betty, who had been sorted out of their group, snuck back over in a move that nearly gave Peter a heart attack. He muffled an exhausted laugh at the double high five she gave a stressed-out Ned. He then had to scoot back and hide on the other side of the roof when the noise attracted attention from the Life Foundation agents below. By the time they’d checked out the roof to their satisfaction and climbed back down to their guns, another bus was leaving and Peter was scooting silently back in place.

And MJ, Ned, and Betty were gone.

Their group wasn’t the only one gone. At least two more were lined up for the last bus, already half-filled. The red Guard was gone too, leaving the agents to figure out the rest. Pushing down a surge of anxiety over the lost faces of his friends, Peter tried to rustle up some next steps. Steve needed him to be his eyes, to make sure everyone was at least making it to the prison. While Peter didn’t have the opportunity to follow the first two buses to the place, he could follow the last one—or possibly even the last two, if they took the same routes.

He didn’t know what to do after that—maybe rustle up some bail? Of course, that assumed there was anything like a court attached to the Life Foundation’s extrajudicial adventure. He rose out of his squat and then rubbed the back of his head. Intending to spook his oblivious neighbors, he stepped off the side of the roof right in front of them, preparing to swing away.

Then in the middle of his descent, someone screamed. It was the muffled, sobbing screams of the truly hopeless.

Peter spooked his neighbors, alright. He also spooked the Life Foundation agents on the ground when he landed on the street level in the middle of a whole squad of them. Jerking away from him in surprise, they started yelling, ordering him to stand down. But they might as well have stayed silent, because all Peter could hear was his own heartbeat and the terror of whoever was crying. He slowly turned towards the empty storefront—to where he’d last seen his only friends.

When he didn’t immediately comply, the agents pointed their weapons at him, some of them firing up powerful Quirks instead. He ignored them entirely, pivoting on his foot to throw himself into the store front. Bullets whistled by him, just missing, as he flew forward, ricocheting off of metal shelving and thunking into cheap wood.

But they didn’t follow him in. He didn’t question why.

The place looked like it had just been abandoned by a crowd of construction workers. Large construction lights created more shadows than illumination in the small space, and stacks and stacks of new flooring, still packaged, blocked most of the way. Plastic sheets hung like curtains everywhere, and metal ladders went all the way up to the ceiling.

And a wall of paint cans hid a scene that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

It was one thing to know spiders trapped their prey in their webs, leaving them to struggle and die. It was another thing entirely to see it acted out in red goo and familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Betty, trapped supine on the floor, wriggling like a pinned worm. Ned, fighting like hell to separate himself from another boy. MJ, spinning like a marionette from the ceiling, her legs swinging. Civilians and strangers and ESU students all around—all trapped, all terrified, all begging with their eyes or covered mouths for Spider-Man to please save them.

And on top of a bare marble counter, like something out of a nightmare, Carnage sat like a king. Headless and mutilated bodies sat at his feet, and everything was covered in blood.

“What? It’s my fucking lunch break.”

Otto had warned him of an ancient fear. It was the fear of being eaten alive.


	14. Chapter 14

Peter crashed into the metal shelves, denting them. He was distantly aware of muffled screaming, then his brain screamed louder. He lifted his arm automatically, and needle teeth clamped on it, digging deep and shaking it like a dog. His other arm swung around with full force, and the painful vice pressure on his arm released. He kicked blindly, trying to push away.

“Ow, what the fuck,” Carnage whined. “You punch like a Mack Truck plowing into a herd of bunny rabbits. Shit. Fuck. Goddamnit!”

Peter opened his eyes, seeing the red Guard bent over himself, clutching his skull. He started to get up and was slammed back by a vicious rush of that red goop. Still, the Guard remained preoccupied, clutching his head and pulling out… skull fragments? Did Peter do that? More importantly, what was the Guard that even a traumatic head injury wasn’t enough to stop him?

“Let. Me.  _ Go _ ,” Peter breathed, tearing at the goop with his free hand. His chest hurt, and he could feel his trapped arm, pinned against his sternum, gush with every pulsating squeeze.

The red Guard horribly—terrifyingly—began to giggle. This was not a man to be reasoned with, Peter thought. Hardly even a man at all. And Peter had lost any leverage he had the second he let himself be cornered, be pinned.

At first, Peter had had the element of surprise. Using it, he had made the first move in their encounter, shooting webs at the Guard’s chest and then yanking them hard enough for the Guard to slam, face down, on the ground amongst the corpses of his last meal. It was the absolute last move Peter’d had the chance to make however—or, at least, the last productive one. The Guard had sprung up almost instantly, laughing and rolling his jaw at his hand.

“Finally!” he’d announced. “Some entertainment!” Then he ate up every bit of distance between Peter in seconds, laughing gleefully, claws extended and demonic teeth open wide.

He had been so unbelievably fast to fight, flexible and mobile in ways Peter hadn’t expected. Every bit of leftover supplies from the construction had been used as a shield or as a weapon. Peter had to tear free of a plastic sheet when it fell over him, leap through the rungs of a ladder when it was thrown at him, and endure with coughs and tearing eyes when the drywall dust filled the air because of Carnage’s utter destruction and disregard for the half-built space around them.

And Peter had almost—almost!—kept up with him. Then he made the mistake of looking at the protestors, both familiar and not. He made the mistake of looking at his friends’ terrified faces.

And now, he was paying the price for it.

Gasping, Peter pried a corner of his living bonds off of his ribs, finally getting under it. Then it slammed back down on him with twice the amount of force. He cried out, squirming underneath it, trying to find purchase in the cluttered floor to push back against a substance that was living and liquid and solid all at once. He was sweating like mad, his heart thrashing like a drowning bird trapped inside a cage that was sinking below the water’s surface. His spidey-sense was  _ screaming _ at him.

But there was nothing he could do.

The Guard swiveled, coming face to face with Peter. His pointed knees spread out over Peter’s feet in his gangly crouch. If Peter was just a little taller, he’d go for the easy shot of Carnage’s crotch, no matter the consequences. Instead, he suffered under the pressure of the deformed exoskeleton prison that was still connected to Carnage’s left shoulder. Instead, he wondered what would give first, his beleaguered lungs or his straining ribs.

And Carnage just crept closer, a long-pointed tongue rolling out of his open mouth. He poked Peter’s shattered lens with curiosity, causing more of the pieces of fall out. “I know that mask. You’re a  _ vigilante _ . We don't do so well with vigilantes. Pro Heroes… so much easier to bend! So full of pressure points. So full of weaknesses. So full of tears they’re not ready to cry.”

This seemed to cause Carnage no little glee, and Peter felt despair at his current position. At what Carnage’s words implied. At what the lack of pursuit by the Life Foundation agent truly meant in the end. Peter was hardly the first to be put in this situation. Hell, this was not even Carnage’s first meal. Was his stomach the destination for all those missing people?

The guys outside… they hadn’t even been surprised. Even the agents on the fire escape seemed to be in on it. Peter’s gut curdled in disgust, but it wasn’t a righteous sort of disgust. It was the kind that came when you were very small, very afraid, and very, very powerless.

“Pro Heroes are simple. But vigilantes?” The red Guard clucked his tongue, shaking his head in mock sadness. “You fools actually  _ believe _ the shit you’re spewing. Just think.  _ You’re not even getting paid to fight a monster like me. _ ”

The goop around Peter started to squeeze, bending his ribs into his chest cavity. He tried not to cry out, but he couldn’t help the noise that escaped anyway. He tasted copper in the back of his throat, and a thousand regrets hit him all at once. Regrets about school. About Aunt May. About the way he’d left things with MJ and Ned. About all the truths he’d yet to share with Wade. About the help he couldn’t give Deadpool every time they clashed over Venom.

“The only good vigilante is a dead one. That’s what my daddy always said. Oh, but don’t you worry. You won’t die. Not right away. I’ve gotten _ real _ good at that.”

Wade had wanted a way out, Peter knew with the newfound clarity that came with staring death in the face. Why else would Deadpool overshare so much private and, in hindsight, probably confidential information? Why else would he continue chattering with Spider-Man when Peter stayed as silent as a mouse? He’d wanted Peter to show him a different way—to drag him there by force, if needed. But Peter was as much in the dark as he was.

How did you say no to an assassination order when the one ordering it had both your uncertain future and the power of the most influential Pro Hero governing agency in the palm of its hand? Deadpool had been  _ stalling _ , and Spider-Man, too caught up in his own web of lies, had been too stupid and self-absorbed to notice.

And now Peter was going to die, and all he could hope was that his final remains were cleaned up so well that no one—not MJ, not Ned, not May, not Tony, and certainly not Wade—ever found out this was how he finally went down.

While Peter stared down the barrel of his own demise, Carnage. Kept. Talking. When his taunts didn’t quite land, he settled back on his haunches, his long-pointed tongue whipping about. Then, abruptly, he stabbed down at Peter’s thigh with his clawed flingers, just hard enough to pierce skin.

“Ughhh-” Peter swallowed down the rest of the noise, not wanting to give Carnage the satisfaction. He flinched when those sharp fingers lifted and closed over his jaw. He shrank away, but there was nowhere to go.

“Listen,” said the Guard. His voice was rough and garbled, and his hot breath was skating all over Peter’s mask, seeping into the cuts and dampening the fabric. Peter didn’t just feel smothered; he felt  _ drowned _ . “I want all of your attention. You don’t have enough time left in this world to be distracted.” He grinned widely when Peter had no choice but to stare straight at him. “Very good. The name’s Carnage, kid. Learn it real quick, because I’m gonna start with your leg. Then the arm you hit me with. Then, if you beg  _ real _ good, I’ll eat your head! Swallow it whole!” His fingers dug into Peter’s cheeks. “But if you’re rude, Imma savor you. Eat the rest of ya nice and slow, and I’ll make sure you’re awake for every second of it. Until you can’t even  _ scream  _ anymore.” He leaned back, his mouth pulling into a vile and sinister grin. “Whaddya say?”

Lightheaded with fear and disgust, Peter managed to notch his fingers around Carnage’s wrist. “Got… any other options… on the menu?” The room was spinning. Peter was shaking. “I’m really picky.”

Carnage giggled, delighted. “Oh! Option B, it is.”

Peter renewed his struggling, but it was for nothing. Carnage’s maw opened up wide, revealing a cavernous mouth full of not one, but three rows of monstrous teeth, like a lamprey given life in humanoid form. Salvia and blood hung from them in heavy strings, and, too quickly, that mouth descended on him, ready to follow through with Carnage’s hellish promise—and his namesake—one limb at a time.

But before Carnage’s teeth did more than graze Peter’s knee, there was a heavy thump. Something had landed on Carnage from on top of a crumbled shelf behind him, and it had curly brown hair. Then it—she—was clinging on his back for dear life when Carnage rose out of his crouch, hands scrambling at his shoulders and digging into red goop.

“What the fuck?” Carnage muttered, annoyed. He straightened out, trying to shrug her off like she was a fly. “Wait your goddamn turn.”

But MJ hung on anyway, resisting this.

In another circumstance, the resulting standoff would have been humorous in a slapstick sort of way—a victorious villain turned into a fool, bent at the waist and divided between keeping one enemy down and another off his back. As terrified as he was, Peter squirreled away this knowledge: Carnage’s exoskeleton was only so flexible and pinning Peter with it was keeping MJ from getting skewered. Peter’s Quirk-enhanced grip on Carnage’s wrist—initially there to keep Carnage from ripping his jaw off—became another shackle Carnage was trapped with. 

But not for long. Carnage was infuriated, swinging back and forth between trying to rip his hand from Peter and trying to throw MJ off his back. All Carnage had to remember was his teeth, and the tug of war would be over in an instant.

The clock was ticking.

“Michelle,” Peter rasped. His grip on Carnage’s wrist tightened. “Run.”

Letting out a shaky, wet breath, MJ lifted her head up off Carnage’s shoulder, her eyes were pupiless, bone white and furious. “Sure,” she bit out. “After this fucking creep  _ dies _ .”

Carnage cackled breathlessly at this, and the anguish that rushed Peter was overwhelming. Of course, MJ wouldn’t leave. Of course, she would refuse to leave him behind. Of course, she’d be strong, even in this. His panic spiked when Carnage’s wrist started to stretch.

But there was one thing he forgot.

MJ didn’t make promises she didn’t try her best to keep.

Under her fingers, Carnage’s exoskeleton started to melt. It burned. Withered. Shrunk. And Carnage  _ screamed _ .

The prison that kept Peter pinned suddenly sloughed away in meaty chunks, and, in front of him, Carnage jumped to his feet. MJ clung to him as hard as she could, even when more pieces fell off of him, revealing the man behind the monster.

MJ didn’t have Peter’s Quirk; she couldn’t hold on for long. Carnage (fighting for his  _ life _ , Peter realized too late) thrashed and fought and finally threw her away from him. But it was too late. The damage was done. Half of him was exposed as a red-haired older man with hollowed out features. That part of him was entirely human. The other half was falling in useless, clay-like clumps on the floor.

And, oh, how he wailed. He threw himself at the mess on the floor, scooping up the hunks and trying to pour it back over himself—with no success. He kept screaming and screaming and screaming, and Peter wasn’t even sure if it was out of pain anymore.

It was eerie and almost worse than being told, in excruciating detail, how, when, and for how long Peter was going to die.

Numb, Peter just watched. Then MJ was digging her hands into Peter’s arm, pulling him out of the destroyed shelves. Breathing heavily, she dragged him away from the screaming man to the back of the store where everyone else had been imprisoned. Much had changed since Peter had stumbled upon the scene. Few were trapped now, and freed protestors were fleeing out the back door, spooked by the continued shrieking. The red webbing that had taken up so much of the space was dying in fractions, withering away. Only small pieces remained alive and pulsing, but they were easy enough to push past.

Did MJ do all this?

Dizzy, Peter turned to her, and she looked back at him. The light in her eyes had faded. He almost wished it didn’t. White-eyed MJ looked powerful, like an avenging angel. Without it, she looked as terrified as he felt.

By the time they approached the back wall, Ned was pulling Betty free. The two of them ran out the back entrance together, skidding around the corner behind the last of the protestors. Peter felt relieved and, right after, MJ tugged on him to follow.

Out of it, Peter complied for a few steps before digging his heels and stopping.

MJ stopped with him. “ESU is a couple of blocks away. That’s where everyone is going,” she said quickly, thinking he needed an explanation. “One of our teachers put up a barrier around campus years ago. If anyone approaches with the intent of hurting a student, it will expel them. Violently.” She tugged on him again. “So, _ come _ . If you hang out with us, you’ll be protected too.”

That sounded like a great plan. Still, Peter resisted. “You should go.”

MJ flinched at this. She looked down to where she was still white-knuckling Peter’s forearm. She dropped the grip instantly, her eyes widening. “Is it- Is it my Quirk? Is that why you won’t come?” Her voice became high and sharp. “I might have killed his Quirk with mine, but he- he was gonna- he was-”

MJ was breaking down. There were tears in her eyes.

Oh, how horrible of a friend Peter was, to keep tripping and exposing her vulnerabilities when she least needed it. The things she’d seen in the few minutes he hadn’t had eyes on her was going to stick with her forever. She’d wanted to expose the Guard for their wrongdoings. She didn’t want them to prove her so brutally right.

Chest aching, Peter touched two fingers to the back of her wrist. “You did everything correct. Good job, Hero.” He paused, then said gently, “But someone needs to buy you some time.”

Her mouth opened immediately. She was so ready to argue with him.

Sadly, he cut her off before she could land a single argument. “He wasn’t alone.”

MJ looked startled. Then her face crumpled. “…I hate you.  _ I hate you.  _ Why did you have to-”

Her gaze jerked to the front. His did too, after a beat. Carnage was no longer screaming. That seemed like a bad sign.

Peter swallowed thickly. “I’ll follow when I can.” Weak, he turned, pulling MJ into a brief, one-armed hug. “Now go.”

Peter nudged her to the exit before he put his back to her. He stood there, still, waiting until her hesitant footsteps faded in the distance.

But Carnage—or what was left of him—didn’t charge back for round two. Instead, the space was still, eerily quiet without the din of his screaming. Straining his senses, Peter blocked the back entrance for five more minutes, every minute feeling like an eternity. Then he cautiously crept forward, ready to be attacked at any moment.

There was a puddle of blood where MJ had saved him, and it stood out against the meatier chunks of Carnage’s damaged exoskeleton. In death, it had settled on a pinkish gray, like a much abused piece of Playdoh left to the elements and the sun day after day.

And still, there was no Carnage. Not as a man, not as a monster. MJ said her Quirk killed other Quirks. Maybe without his own, Carnage decided to run for it? He didn’t seem to have a whole lot of allies amongst the Life Foundation teams. Even as Peter crept within sight of the front door, he could hear agents outside discussing whether or not they should check on him. Carnage’s personal safety, it seemed, was not a deciding factor in this. At least one agent was wistfully hoping someone with a Quirk had “zapped Carny real good on the way down”, which reminded Peter that Carnage wasn’t the only monster in town.

Peter took a deep breath. Then he burst through the front.

The Support agents guarding the door didn’t expect it. Peter webbed as many as he could to the ground, then ducked automatically to avoid an electrified stick. As he jumped back, he could see many agents startled out of complacency, jumping out of the back of vans and fumbling with their weapons. The barricade on the streets had been compressed to just a handful of buildings, and the press were closer than ever. Peter saw a handful run back to the partition that held them back, scrambling for their cameras as Peter slammed his fist into the side of the head of a very large agent, knocking him out cold.

Even as Peter webbed a guy to a light pole, he was realistic; he wasn’t winning this. A wounded vigilante with a so-so Quirk wasn’t winning against ten military trained agents with a variety of Quirks and weaponry.

All he was aiming for was buying MJ a little more time.

His body might have been exhausted, but his spidey sense was as sharp as ever, helping him evade projectiles left and right. Someone with a water Quirk knocked Peter off his feet, but that only worked once. In a shocking reunion, he reintroduced Mr. Electric Stick back to Mr. Electric Stick Guy and left them both on the ground. He webbed two charging agents together, face-to-face, before dropping the man and the woman on a table outside of one of the many forcefully emptied storefronts.

It was, ironically, the largest of targets that got Peter in the end. An agent with an inflation Quirk rapidly grew behind him, intercepting Peter in one of his jumps backwards and striking him hard in his upper back. Peter flew forward with the force of it, crashing into a parked car right outside of Carnage’s lunch spot. Adding insult to injury, the vehicle started shrieking with an alarm.

Groaning, Peter pried his arm out of the shattered glass, leaning against the top of the car for support and trying to find the reserves to keep fighting.

But when he turned around, he was pinned by a half-circle of Life Foundation agents—and a half-circle of weapons, aimed towards him. Sighing, Peter rolled forward on his feet, raising his fists anyway. Then he paused, his peripheral vision catching a glimmer of movement.

“Read the room, Spider-Man,” said an agent smugly. Peter looked down. A red laser dot was dancing on the spider on Peter’s chest. Breathing raggedly, Peter watched it move. After being menaced by a cannibal, a threat of getting shot was almost a relief. Finally, a normal attempt on his life. Peter laughed hoarsely, speechless.

Then an agent with some seniority stepped forward. “You are being arrested for interfering with Pro Hero activity and impeding an investigation,” he announced loudly.

Peter saw why quickly. There were flashing lights everywhere. Pressed up against the barriers blocking off traffic were dozens of news crews and lookie loos. Above them, a helicopter was circling at a distance. Even more overwhelming were the eyes everywhere on the buildings—scores and scores of faces pressing up against windows, poking out over fire escapes, looking over the edges of roof tops.

Never before had Peter felt so on trial by his fellow New Yorkers as they watched him willfully break the law.

“And for property damage,” the senior agent said after a beat, nodding to the car, like Peter had chosen to use it as a crash pad.

But the stranger might as well not have even been there; Peter’s eyes were on his city. The faces. The fear. The confusion.

“You knew what I’d find there,” he said very softly. “You knew what Carnage was doing. What makes you think I’ll surrender to someone like you.”

After a long moment, Peter’s gaze dropped back down to the senior agent. The man was an older gentleman. He had a lived-in sort of face and a thick white handlebar mustache. His gray eyes, so cold before, blinked once. A strange look of guilt passed over his expression. Then it was gone, and he raised his own weapon—a handgun—a little higher.

“You know how this goes, Spider-Man,” he said gruffly, his voice pitched not to carry. “Your guilt is already set. Everyone saw you go in there. There’s already been four segments on the local news about you. The question isn’t that you’re guilty—it’s how much shit you’re going to be in once we catch you.”

He cocked his head to the side. Then the senior agent stood up straight, holstering his weapon. He lifted both hands in peace and walked closer to Peter, coincidentally—or not—blocking the sniper’s shot on Peter’s chest.

Peter watched him warily, all of his muscles bunching up to spring away. Peter flinched when the man clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You surrender now, son, and we’ll get a crew in. All anyone will know about what you  _ think _ you saw… is that you bit off more than you could swallow with us, and that we finally nailed your ass to the wall for years of breaking the law.” The agent poked a finger at Peter’s face, frowning. “But you keep causing trouble, maybe we don’t get a crew in. Maybe someone with a camera and a large audience finds what he left behind, and all that shit gets pinned on  _ you _ instead. That is to say, if you can escape our boys on the roof.”

Peter’s eyes jumped up to the skyline to see the snipers had readjusted their angles—tell-tale laser pointers off, this time.

The Life Foundation was slick. It was adjusting the narrative mid-scene for the maximum positive coverage, sending the most fatherly-looking of the bullying agents to talk down a villain, man to man, like they weren’t stalling to cover up evidence of Carnage’s brutality. What a great photo opportunity. Peter was being  _ used _ .

Disgusted, he snorted, knocking the man’s hand off his shoulder. The stranger’s eyes were cold again, and the agents behind him readied up their Quirks and their weaponry. The snipers settled in. Peter wasn’t going to have moments to move—he was going to have fractions of a second. On a good day, that was more than enough time. Today… well, today, he could at least make them look like fools, couldn’t he. As backed into a corner as he was, that was more than enough revenge for him. He was petty like that.

But Peter hesitated. Because he knew how this looked like for him too.

Was he really going to fight through the Life Foundation agents just to forever get branded as a villain? Was this where New York’s razor thin tolerance of him as a vigilante snapped?

But if he gave up and let them take him into custody, what happened next? Would he be made an example of like Steve had warned, or would he disappear like so many others under the Guard’s watch?

Peter had done his part; he didn’t have to fight anymore. MJ and the others had to be on campus by now. The real trouble was going to come when the Life Foundation started to clean up its mess. The second they went into the store that Carnage had claimed, the agents would know there were more witnesses to silence. Then the real battle would begin. ESU would rally around them. Peter was sure of it.

Peter wanted to be there. He didn’t want to submit. He didn’t want to surrender.

And yet…

Scanning the street, Peter saw a group of uniformed middle schoolers. The three boys were crowded up behind a chain linked fence blocking off an alley, their eyes peering curiously through the gaps. They whispered, pointing at Peter, and then the agents, and then the men on the roof. The boys gradually grew more and more agitated about the scene they were witnessing, fear breaking through the awe.

Peter was going to get lit up the second he moved—and Peter felt, in his gut, that the decision had been made.

Spider-Man was done. If only to keep a bunch of kids from watching someone get executed on the street.

Sighing, Peter started to take a knee, lifting his arms behind his head. He registered the briefest of dumbfounded looks on the agents’ faces in front of him as he descended. He caught half a complaint about how in the hell they were supposed to secure and transport a vigilante with the equipment left on the scene, and Peter acknowledged his life as he knew it was officially over.

Sorry, friends. Sorry, teachers. Sorry, May.

Peter’s mouth twisted. Sorry… Wade.

Then there was a mighty thunk behind him. It was followed up by rushing feet and an inhuman shriek. He started to turn towards it but stopped when the gun in front of him lifted and aimed at his head, his spidey senses torn between two great threats.

Then the threat behind him sprung, slamming into him and sinking teeth deep, deep into his shoulder.

Carnage’s Quirk wasn’t dead after all.

Peter buckled forward on his hands and knees, screaming in pain, his hands seeking, digging, finding any purchase he could to get the teeth out of his skin.

And find purchase he did, even though goopy, gummy skin. He found fragile human vertebrates and clung, using the grip to throw Carnage over his shoulder and on his back on the street. Then he staggered back, a hand clamped over his torn-up skin.

Still looking like a hybrid monster, Carnage rolled back up to his feet. Whatever sense he had before was gone, and his eyes bled with intense hatred.

The agents had scattered, torn between driving away civilians, detaining Peter, and appeasing Carnage. When Carnage shoved his arm through the fatherly agent’s chest, killing him instantly for all to see, their priorities rapidly shifted to the biggest menace on scene. It didn’t help. Carnage’s half-dead exoskeleton was constantly on the move, defending against and killing any agent who got in his way.

There was so much screaming.

Realizing this was about to get ugly, and fast, Peter shot a line of webbing to the least populated corner of the roof, taking his shot on making a getaway. Carnage tore after him immediately, plowing through his own Support entourage like they were paper. And the media followed.

What followed had to be the worst chase of Peter’s entire life.

He took to the skies, a place where he normally held the advantage over his natural prey. But Carnage was right on his heels—literally snapping at them in several cases. Worse still was the fact that Peter had been bitten twice by those teeth, and the second bite did what the first hadn’t, ruining his full range of motion. Peter found himself relying entirely on his right arm and his right side, no longer able to lift his left higher than his ribs.

Which was problematic when a guy relied on two arms to websling around the city.

His only saving grace was that Carnage didn’t have perfect control of his Quirk anymore either, which led him to smash windows and even fall in ways that seemed to hurt his human half. But he always jerked himself back up and tried again, single-mindedly focused on trying to murder Peter on live television.

Peter tried to tangle with him a couple of times in the air, wanting to stop him, wanting to keep him from a rampage. But his webs wouldn’t hold him and, even with a half-dead Quirk, Carnage was brutal and quick.

It was a mistake to try and outsmart him. This, Peter learned while trying to juke Carnage around a cupola on top of a building. Carnage went left when he should have gone right, and the end result was a massive hand slicing him from his left shoulder down to his right hip. Peter pushed the human half of Carnage away with his left hand, his palm sticking to—and pulling—something out the Guard’s pocket. They both tipped over and fell off of the cupola, and it took too many stories for Peter to right himself again and swing away.

Peter was going to die if he fought him for much longer. He needed to run. He needed to get to ESU. He needed to trust in Wanda’s Quirk.

So he retreated instead.

It didn’t go well. Thanks to his shoulder injury, he was only able to swing with one arm, which led to some creative freefalling until he could throw another web. He had almost zero navigational control too and had to make a hard left by landing on—and running across—a fire escape. It wasn’t the lightest of landings either. He’d made the briefest eye contact with the resident of the unit, who stared wide eyed at him, a popsicle falling out of her mouth.

Carnage landed on the same fire escape, denting it even further before springing after Peter. Nothing seemed to faze him. He kept following. He kept taunting. He kept cackling like a mad man—and he was steadily gaining on Peter.

But ESU emerged, and the barrier MJ promised him was already up, a bright red glow. Gritting his teeth, Peter landed on a low building across the street, still moving forward, still sprinting. A Life Foundation van ripped around a street corner, half-on the sidewalk, and made to intercept him.

But he made one more leap, one more hail mary throw of his web. It caught on something on campus—a tree, perhaps—and he swung seamlessly through the barrier, sailing into school grounds.

He didn’t have time to rejoice. He had no way to stop himself, and a building was rapidly approaching. Taking a deep breath, he let go of the web, curling into a ball in the air.

And then he smashed through the window of the science building. He hit the hard floor, bouncing once with the force of his speed, then rolled the rest of the way, finally stopping when his back skidded against the wall.

Peter stayed there, vibrating and trembling. His mask was wet with saliva, sweat, and blood, and the more he blinked, the more his broken lens fell apart. He yanked it off his face, gasping. When no one followed him in, he slowly sat up, fighting the rise of bile in the back of his throat. His whole body was throbbing.

He sat there for a long time, gasping and afraid to move.

-

Peter woke up to the smell of peppermint. To the sound of rapid footsteps echoing through halls. Dying daylight streamed through the red barrier, hinting at the time of day. But the room itself was very dark and very cold. The window Peter crashed through was still dropping bits and pieces of glass, but that wasn’t what caught his attention.

No, what did that was the dead light post directly parallel to the window. The campus had tons of them, and a few were notorious as emergency lights, like this one. They were always on for safety reasons, no matter how close they were to your dorm window.

However, it was off now. That combined with the cold and the red sky stirred up faint feelings of concern. But Peter was a solid mass of tensed up and sore muscles. He couldn’t even move. He flexed his hand against the floor to try anyway, barely able to nudge a shard of glass he’d taken with him.

He must have fallen unconscious again because he jerked awake at the sound of a voice. A very loud one, amplified by a Quirk.

“ **Your priority is civilians and fellow classmates—not one of your theories, Mr. Leeds** .” Melissa Gold must have been very far away. Her command swelled, filling the space and picking up echoes and reverberations from the halls of the building, ricocheting against marble and wood.

Then there was a very close beep from a walkie talkie. “Copy that,” Ned said sheepishly. The peppermint smell thickened. Then, shamelessly, he said, “Anyway. Back to my theory-”

He seemed to at least be in good company.

“You really think Spider-Man is in here?” asked Betty. Peter could almost distinguish the clicks of the soles of her shoes from Ned’s and one other person, and the idea made him smile tiredly.

“I know he is,” Ned declared, his voice even closer. “Given what we saw on social media before those dicks bricked us, and also the alarms going off in this building before the power was cut, he would came in from  _ this _ angle-”

Sighing, Peter let Ned’s voice travel in one ear and out the other. It was soothing. Ned was rattling off a number of insights his Quirk was feeding him, ranging from Peter’s injuries to Peter’s speed. His Quirk was something else, Peter thought fondly. His vision was starting to gray out at the edges. He was awfully cold. His chin dipped to his chest.

Then he jerked up again at the thud of a door swinging open—Peter’s door. Ned came in first, reeking of peppermint still, and Betty was quick on his heels. Finally, MJ followed at a much slower pace, thin arms clasped around her torso, her expression tight.

“He must have come in through the window,” Ned crowed, charging forward in a jog. In the darkness, he had eyes only for the broken glass. “There! I told you.”

Betty followed him quickly, just as excited. Peter watched the two of them run past him, oblivious to his presence. Ned hurried right up to the window, his Quirk focused eyes darting around for a new clue to feed his insights.

“Be careful,” MJ rasped, her voice hoarse. She seemed so tired. What a day. Poor MJ.

Ned snorted. “What do I have to be careful about?” He turned around with a shrug. “It’s just Spider-Man, not-”

Ned made eye contact with Peter in the low-light of the room. There was no hiding, not when a line of blood and glass helpfully pointed the way. Not when his mask laid limp on his leg instead of over and covering his face.

So Ned never finished his sentence. He just looked and looked and looked, and soon enough, Ned wasn’t the only one looking.

Peter wondered a thousand times what he’d feel when his friends finally learned about Spider-Man. Years of lying had built up this moment so much in his head. He imagined terror and guilt. What he didn’t imagine was that he’d feel so numb. He didn’t think he’d be sitting in a puddle of his own blood, having been severely beaten by a cannibalistic creature that was supposed to protect the city. He couldn’t imagine there were worse ways to reveal himself.

Still, unable to help himself, he lifted his good arm about four inches off the floor in a faint greeting.

His voice did not break the looks of shock and anguish off of their faces. What it did, however, was break the stalemate. Peter had barely finished wiggling his fingers before they crossed the room to him, eating up the distance between them in long strides and hurried footsteps. When they got within five feet of him, the girls slowed, approaching with caution, whereas Ned immediately kneeled in glass. Peter winced at the crunch; Ned would regret that later.

“I lied,” Ned said thickly. “I lied, and I take back my promise.  _ I hate you for this _ .” Ned looked like he was going to start crying.

“Bummer,” Peter breathed, offering him a weak fist. He smiled thinly when Ned knocked their knuckles together anyway. He turned his head at the sound of a careful crouch. “Hey, MJ. Three guesses how wimpy Peter Parker met Spider-Man—and the first two guesses don’t count.” The joke tore MJ’s eyes away from his shredded skin, but she said nothing, her mouth pressing flat. “Oh boy, tough crowd. Guess I might need a bandage…?”

“Yes!” Betty blurted out. She was the only one still standing, bent as she was at the waist. She’d straightened up at her shout, startling them all. “ _ Yes. _ MJ, Ned. The  _ auditorium _ .”

This meant something to MJ and Ned because they both jumped to their feet. Pleased at being of assistance, Betty grinned, clapping her hands once. Peter felt terribly out of the loop.

“Use that Quirk of yours to MacGyver us a stretcher design,” MJ said, her gaze darting around the room for ideas.

“What?” Ned complained. He flexed, slapping his bicep. “I bench 190,  _ Michelle _ .” He sounded offended.

“How many reps,  _ Edward _ ?” MJ fired back. “Now’s not the time to play hero so you can princess carry your best friend to safety.” Oh, Peter thought. They were talking about him. “You’d have to carry him half-way across campus, over stairs and through buildings—and if one of those wounds opens back up because of your ego, so help me God-”

“Okay, okay,” Ned said quickly, sounding bummed. The room filled with a fresh burst of peppermint. With interest, Ned drifted towards the corner where a particularly enthusiastic teacher had built a bookshelf with nothing but reclaimed PVC pipes. MJ followed after him grimly.

But Peter didn’t get a chance to see where Ned’s new insight was taking him because Betty was bending in front of him again. She picked his mask off his leg and shook all of the debris out of the folds. Noticing his attention, she opened up the bottom of it between her fingers, beckoning to him with it in a wordless question. When Peter bent his neck, she leaned forward, easing the mask over his head, taking care to ensure that his lenses sat just right over his eyes.

“You’re going to be okay,” Betty promised him. Peter didn’t understand how she could look at him like that, gentle and calm. She’d lost her eye-catching hat and her loose braid had taken the appearance of a fluffed out, aggravated cat’s tail from when he saw her last. Her neck was littered with shallow maroon finger marks, and her face had been abraded from where she had scraped it across concrete. But she was still awfully pretty. Peter, literally sitting in his own filth, felt like a goblin in comparison. “We’ll make sure your identity is safe. Even if it leaks somewhere… I’ll bury it.”

“That’s a hell of a promise.”

“You saved my life,” she said simply. “Breaking the internet is the least I can do.”

Peter let out a shaky laugh, looking away. For someone who liked following the rules, Betty was quick to drop them to achieve her own agenda. MJ could kill Quirks. Peter could break necks. Ned could do anything from blurting out your worst secret to assembling a murder weapon with a rubber band and a couple of toothpicks. But it was Betty who had the scariest Quirk of them all.

Betty smiled at him a little longer, then her eyes dropped his numbed left arm. “What do you have in your hand?”

Peter started to answer before he even looked. “Nothing, I-” She flipped his palm over, revealing to him either his ignorance or his lie. “Oh.” Nestled in his palm was a dense, flat rectangle. When had that gotten there? “Sergeant Sticky Hands, reporting for duty.”

Together, Betty and Peter pried it off his hand. Peter was concerned how little he could feel of it as well as how hard it was to disengage his Quirk. But they got it off eventually, and Betty turned it over in her own hands. What seemed roughly palm sized in his hands—which were large and beaten to hell after years of slamming against many different surfaces—was much bigger in hers. It took a couple of flips of the object (the device) before they recognized the unwieldy, reinforced thing as a cell phone.

And then it rang, and Betty dropped it instantly, springing to her feet.

“What is that?” MJ demanded, charging over. She had a first aid kit in her hands. The phone kept ringing, but neither she nor anyone else in the room moved to answer it. “Is this yours, Peter?”

Peter just shook his head. The last time he remembered using that hand was to catch his fall on the roof across from the school—but there was a streak of dirt on the reinforced side of the phone, a match to the dirt on his good hand. He’d had it stuck to him before that moment. But when in the world could have-

The cupola, he remembered suddenly. The last time he’d directly tangled with Carnage. Had he accidentally pickpocketed the guy? Oops.

The phone went silent. Then it started ringing again almost immediately.

“Must be a Pro Hero’s,” Betty said grimly.

“Has to be.” Ned nudged it with his foot. “We haven’t had any outside communication in at least the last two hours. And only the Pros have access to this kind of tech.

“…What’s going on?” None of that sounded promising.

MJ crouched down next to him, opening up the first aid kit. “Look around you, Peter,” she said, making eye contact with him for the first time. “The power’s cut. The internet is down. Our phones have been bricked. Even the teachers’.”

Quick to provide backup to MJ’s claims, Betty pulled her phone out of her pocket, showing him the screen. The broadcast signal that normally clamped down on their phones in a crisis tended to show emergency information. Resources. Places they should evacuate to. Orders to maximize public safety. What did her screen have on it now? 

A logo of the Life Foundation and the words “STAY PUT. WE ARE HERE.”

That wasn’t exactly a reassurance. Nor was the fact that Wanda’s barrier around the school was still up, staining everything an eerie red.

“Peter,” Ned said, “we’re under siege.”

Between them, the cell rang again. And again. And again.

-

Peter woke up abruptly. His body had moved on its own, his good hand snatching at the air above him to catch the fingers descending on his mask. Gripping a thick wrist rather hard, he sat up quickly, his eyes adjusting to the dim light to see none other than Beck leaning over him.

They said nothing to each other for a long time.

Once MJ had wrapped up Peter’s injuries to hold him over, they had brought him into the auditorium at the center of campus. The space had been transformed into an emergency center, catering to the needs of both the students and their protestor guests. There were stations for food, water, clothing, medical treatment, and even counseling from their very tired looking staff psychologist.

Peter hadn’t been particularly surprised at this—this is what they were trained to do, after all. But what stunned him the most was the number of march participants present, far more than Carnage’s menu justified. He would be gradually updated on why this was the case, on the nature of the two part assault that saw 95% of them arrested, on how the Guard had picked off their stragglers first before targeting the front of the march with the full might of their Support personnel. 

But at that very moment, he was just glad he’d talked MJ into letting him walk in on his own two feet because, for at least five seconds, he was the focus of every person in the room.

Chatter ceased. A couple of water bottles fell. People were elbowed. Fingers were pointed. And even the very injured weren’t immune to their curiosity, Peter had noted. Just fifteen feet away, a man with a bandage wrapped around an eye injury bent around the senior Support Track student assisting him just to gape at Peter.

He was very familiar with that gut feeling of being in the wrong part of town at the wrong time, but never on his own college campus. He knew the nooks and crannies of the place like very few people did. It was quite literally his second home.

But that feeling of insecure, imagined hostility didn’t hold a candle to the very real aggression he was sensing from Beck right now.

Beck’s eyes were cold. “You’re going to break my arm,” he said conversationally. “Not the best way to pay us back for our hospitality, kid.”

They had given him a separate room to recuperate. A large closet, really. The man with the eye injury had been the first one to jump off his cot and offer it to him, and the nurses of the day—his peers and their supervisor, the very last of their medical staff still on campus—apologized profusely. They’d practically pelted him with food, water, and blankets while promising that those amongst them with healing Quirks would swing back to him as soon as they could—or, in one particular case of imminent Quirk exhaustion, as soon as he had finished his nap.

It had almost been abrasive, how kind they’d been. Beck’s treatment of him was far more consistent with Peter’s expectations.

“Us. Our.” Peter echoed Beck’s words in a thick voice. “I don’t see  _ you _ contributing.”

“Ha.” Beck shook his head slightly. “That’s not how my Quirk works.”

“That’s not stopping those kids out there.” Peter was pretty sure one of the freshmen gently washing out injuries had a wind Quirk. Another did something with slime.

Beck smirked. “Perks of professorship, I suppose.”

“Then tell me, professor,” Peter replied caustically, “is it normal for teachers to manhandle people in their sleep?”

“Who says that’s what I was doing? So paranoid.  _ I’m _ the one who is about to have a broken bone here,” Beck said. He flexed his hand, smirk widening. “Some friendly advice, though. That’s not an accusation you want to pursue. Especially not here. After all, at the end of the day, it’s my word against yours.”

Peter was immediately infuriated. His hand tightened on Beck’s arm enough to shake the smug expression off of his face. Beck’s other hand flew to Peter’s wrist, trying to pry his fingers loose, and red sparks burst around Peter’s hand. But, in his rage, Peter barely registered the sight, dismissing it as Beck’s rarely used Quirk.

Instead, he was consumed by thoughts of violence. He considered breaking Beck’s arm. He considered breaking Beck’s  _ face _ . To hell with the consequences. His arm sparked even faster, radiating with heat.

Then a voice broke in.

“What are you doing,” MJ said flatly.

Peter’s hand loosened immediately. The sparks disappeared, and Beck took his arm back, scowling and rubbing at the spot. But instead of following through with his threat, Beck just shrugged, letting it go.

“Trying to get some information.” Beck straightened up, turning to her. “Like you should have before letting a criminal loose amongst us.”

“Yeah, he’s a real fox in a hen house,” she said. “Look at all the trouble he’s causing.” MJ gestured broadly at him.

Peter looked down at himself—at the mess of his torn suit, at the bandages there. Yeah, he deserved that. He did look kind of pathetic. He flexed his still stinging arm, looking at it. There were tiny cuts and abrasions there that weren’t there before. Odd.

MJ was followed by Ned and Betty. Ned, as usual, shied away from Beck, hanging out around Peter’s feet. MJ, on the other hand, had no qualms about elbowing her way past Beck, stepping on his toes twice with insincere apologies. Betty stuck by Ned, holding his right hand and staring curiously up at Beck as he was forcefully nudged to the bottom corner of Peter’s bed, well out of grabbing distance.

The room was very crowded. Peter was just glad he’d yet to develop claustrophobia, or else this would be it for him. As it was, he sat up the best he could, pulling up his sore legs closer to him to give Ned a place to sit.

“What did I miss?” Peter said lightly, tugging on the end of his mask. “Siege-wise, I mean…”

“Nothing much. Wanda’s barrier is still keeping the Life Foundation at bay,” MJ said with a hint of pride. “As long as they want to hurt us, they can’t get through. It’s all thanks to her.”

Beck snorted. “You know, Maximoff isn’t as infallible as you like to think.”

Any pleasure on MJ’s face soured immediately. “She’s doing well so far. Get back to me when you find evidence to the contrary,” she retorted.

“I just might,” Beck said very softly.

“Anyway,” said MJ impatiently, “we  _ were _ gathering info. Spider-Man actually delivered the motherlode.”

At her nod, Ned pulled the cell phone out of his jacket.

The black device was no longer ringing, but someone had taken off the clamshell cover, revealing a very scratched up—even  _ gouged _ —screen. The product lines available to Pro Heroes were famously sturdy, able to withstand fires, bullets, fall damage, and even small bombs. It was a testament to how rough Carnage was with his belongings that the phone was still so wrecked.

Of course, that legendary engineered strength was hardly important now. Instead, it was its inner components that drew Peter’s interest. As a general policy, Pro Heroes temporarily bricked people’s cell phones in times of extreme crises in order to curb mischief, criminal activities, and other risk taking. This, everyone knew, just as they knew that Pro Heroes were not vulnerable to the same bricking. To keep open a line of communication even during emergency broadcasts, their phones had a special chip inside that repelled the signal. This was basic knowledge.

But as Pro Heroes themselves (retired, active, or on sabbatical), ESU’s teachers should have been similarly protected. But they were bricked just like everyone else. On top of that, the use of the emergency broadcast signal was highly controversial and unpopular in a world that was growing increasingly dependent on smartphones. The Central Hero Agency had to get approval from several layers of local government to even get near the trigger, and every use was highly regulated and investigated. And yet the Life Foundation had used it at least twice today—once against their march and once against their school. Who the hell would approve something like that?

There was only one conclusion. The Life Foundation was not just inappropriately using and/or mimicking a disaster protocol for their own aims. They were also independently developing technology that could hobble Pro Hero Society as they knew it.

“So it’s true then,” Beck said, staring at the phone. “Spider-Man stole company property. Just as the Life Foundation claimed.”

Peter’s stomach dropped.

“He didn’t  _ steal  _ anything!” Betty countered protectively, scowling at him. For his part, Beck seemed bemused at all of her five foot three fury.

Cheered by this, Peter just lifted a shoulder. “Well.  _ Technically _ -”

“Shut up, Spidey,” MJ said, similarly cross. Hell, even Ned looked mad. “After what they did to us? Their claims don’t mean  _ anything _ .” Her hands were clenched into fists. “They were converging on ESU well before Spidey made his way back here. The phone is just an obvious, blatant  _ excuse _ -”

“Excuse, a reason, justification— _ it doesn’t matter _ ,” Beck said. “The facts are this.” He started counting them off on his hand. “1, we’re surrounded. 2, without power or working cell phones, we have zero options to communicate with the outside world. 3, we’re harboring  _ multiple _ persons of interest, which makes this school and everyone in it accessories to crimes at the very least.”

MJ opened her mouth, ready to fight that, but Beck just raised his voice and kept talking.

“And 4, every Pro Hero in New York City is standing down. On top of that, more than half of the school has already left for winter break! No matter what you or anyone else at the march alleges, no matter what horror stories you spread, we’re at an  _ incredible _ disadvantage.” Beck threw out his arms in exasperation. “If the Life Foundation wants to make one measly cell phone the centerpiece of their actions against us today, we need to lean into that! That’s the only card we have up our sleeve.”

“And what would you have us do with it? Just give it back?” MJ said.

Beck pointed at her. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Do you have any idea what’s on this phone?” Betty spat, outraged.

Ned lifted his newly vacated hand, shaking it out with a pained look. Girl had a grip. But, like Peter, he said nothing, watching the conversation fly by like a spectator in a tennis match. Unlike Peter, however, he at least seemed to be tracking it. Peter was so very much out of the loop, and he hated it.

“No,” Beck said dismissively, “and neither do you.”

“Actually…” Ned said. “We do. I figured out the password about an hour ago. And there’s a huge reason they want it back.” He fiddled with it for a second, tapping through something on the screen. “Carnage, uh. He fancied himself an amateur videographer.” Then, hesitating, he selected a file, turning the phone around for the others to see.

A video played. The angle wasn’t quite right for Peter, but he didn’t need any visuals. He broke out immediately in sweat, his adrenaline surging. His whole body tensed up in anticipation of danger.

The _ sounds _ alone were enough to throw him back to that horrid little place Carnage had opportunistically carved out for him.

Screaming. Pleading. Wailing. Meaty crunching. And that awful, awful  _ laugh _ .

Ned stopped the video about ten seconds in, then tossed the phone at MJ. He looked sick to his stomach. Neither Betty nor MJ looked any better at such a stark reminder of what they observed up close and personal, but they both stood still, struggling to control their expressions. Beck himself seemed disturbed. He took half a step back, rubbing his hand over his face and beard. He said nothing.

MJ was the one who finally broke the silence, tipping her chin up. Peter’s eyes locked onto her. “Allegations and eyewitness reports aren’t the slam dunk evidence they used to be. There are twenty people in this school alone with Quirks that can get that evidence thrown out. Mind altering, reality twisting quirks.”

She had a flinty look on her face that reminded him not of her usual brand of stubbornness, but of being saved by a white eyed version of one of his closest friends. His body slowly unclenched, muscle by muscle, and his heart calmed. Only his spidey sense continued thrumming, but that had nothing to do with her or the video. It had been like that ever since he woke up in the science building.

Beck watched her too, his expression far more intense.

“But video,” MJ said, continuing. “Photos. Texts. Files. Emails.  _ Orders. _ Harder to refute, aren’t they?”

Beck gave it a moment before finally saying, “Those also can be faked.” What a contrary bastard.

“Maybe,” MJ said. “But it’s good enough to at least get an investigation. Good enough to yank some of our Pro Heroes from retirement. In fact, I think-”

The phone rang in MJ’s hand. Panicking, she dropped it immediately. It landed next to Peter’s knee. Beck reached out for it but was beaten to the punch by Betty, who scooped it up in both hands and frowned at the screen. “Unknown number,” she said.

They stayed quiet, letting the phone ring and ring until the caller reached voicemail. Peter’s hair was standing on end, and the others looked similarly spooked.

“I’m guessing this isn’t the guy who was calling earlier,” Peter said slowly.

“The guy calling earlier was  _ Riot _ ,” Ned told him, expression distressed. Ah.

They all stared at the phone. The clawed-up device looked so normal and so sinister at the same time. Who the hell was on the other end of the line? Who just casually  _ called  _ a guy like Carnage? Someone as bad as him? Someone even worse?

Hating himself for it, Peter looked to Beck for direction. But the retired Pro Hero seemed to be hanging back, his expression neutral. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he offered them nothing. Useless teacher, Peter thought.

Realizing he had to voice the obvious question, Peter said, “Should we answer?”

“No,” Ned said vehemently just as MJ blurted out, “Yes!” They looked at each other, too alarmed to even argue.

“It would be good to know who is calling,” Betty hedged, looking at Beck. “But, at the same time, Carnage didn’t have a lot of contacts. And those he did? All Life Foundation people.”

“That would make sense,” Beck said. “It is a  _ company _ phone, after all.”

The implication was clear. If the only people who contacted Carnage—or even knew his number—were from the Life Foundation, and they all knew Carnage’s phone had been taken, then the person they wanted to speak with… was Spider-Man. He was the thief they were looking for. He was the major threat to their narrative. And the Life Foundation allowed no one but themselves to control the narrative.

“I think-” MJ tried to finish her thought, but the phone rang yet again.

“Same number,” Betty said. She offered it up for someone else to take. Beck went for it, but Peter shot a line at it, snatching it up instantly. Then, unable to take the suspense any longer, he slid the green phone icon over, answering the call.

There was a long stretch of silence on the other end. Then a rush of excited words from a very familiar voice.

“WEBS! Hey there, cutie patootie. Your adorable self was caught on camera stealing a  _ very _ important piece of equipment from one of our new overlords. Wanna chat about it?”

In different circumstances, the looks of relief on his friends’ faces would have been comical. So too would have been their looks of confusion and concern when Peter panicked, cutting the call short and nearly throwing the phone away from him.

Betty scooped it back up. It started ringing immediately.

“What’s wrong?” Ned asked obliviously. “It’s just that Wade guy, right?”

“That’s not Wade, that’s Deadpool,” Peter corrected tersely. He pulled his feet underneath him, crouching on the cot like Wade was around the corner and he had only seconds to hide. “He’s on the clock.” Peter could tell.

Beck was watching him curiously.

“So?” MJ said. “Talk to him anyway! Maybe he’ll relay something to everyone out there. Let them know what’s really going on.”

Beck dashed her hopes immediately. “He’s a notoriously unreliable narrator,” he commented casually, examining his wrist. “No one will believe anything he says without evidence behind it. And a lot of it.”

Frustrated, MJ turned back to him. “Then just mine him for information! Just go.  _ Answer him _ .”

The last time he’d felt this bad with MJ, he was backing out of her protest without a solid reason why. But this time, it felt even worse. It felt like his whole life and future happiness was on the line here, and he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because Deadpool wanted to talk to Spider-Man, and Peter had worked very hard up until this point to make sure all conversations were one-sided.

“I’ve never spoken to Deadpool before,” Peter offered tensely. When MJ threw her arms in a so what gesture, he switched his gaze over to Betty. After a full body jolt, she got it. Of the three of his friends, Betty was the one who knew the most about Peter’s complicated relationship with Wade. Even now, MJ was squinting at him, like she was trying to put something together.

Betty pushed the ringing phone at Ned instead. “You answer.”

Ned was alarmed. “I- what? Uh, okay.” Sweating visibly, he gulped and answered on the very last ring. He put it on speaker, cringing as he waited to follow through with his role.

Peter dropped from his crouch onto his knees, unable to help the urge to get a little closer to that comforting—if not panic inducing—voice.

Ned didn’t say hello. Neither did Deadpool, and both waited for it. When it didn’t come, Deadpool barreled on cheerfully. “Uh oh, did we get cut off? Let’s try again.” He cleared his throat. “Hi Webs! You got caught red handed, you naughty boy. If you were so hard up for a phone, you should have just let me know! I have, like, sixteen. I coulda given you one.” He sighed dramatically. “But it’s a mess now… All anyone’s chatting about is how the press caught you stealing in broad daylight.”

“Oh yeah?” Peter’s head shot up at that. Ned’s first words were tight and angry. His face was too, bleeding into a dull red. “Did they catch him  _ maiming _ me?”

Oh Ned, Peter thought. His friend was  _ furious _ . His knuckles were white from how hard he was holding the phone, and he was avoiding Peter’s gaze entirely. Peter struggled to think of a time he’d seen Ned so mad and came up with a blank. Next to him, Betty hooked her hand on his opposite shoulder, leaning her head on the one closest to her.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then- “You speak! Oh em gee.” Deadpool’s voice sounded strained. “Ahem. Regrettable damage, I’m sure. Just a misunderstanding between our boys in red, right?” Deadpool didn’t sound like he believed it anymore than they did. “Anyhoo.  _ That phone. _ It’s so irreplaceable! So many important memories, programmed passwords, and bookmarked jerkoff materials—you can empathize with that, right?” Deadpool’s voice pitched from cheerful to cajoling. “So why don’t you throw it outside of the witch’s barrier, and we’ll call it even Steven Seagal, m’kay? What do you say?”

Ned’s gaze slid to Beck, his expression calculating. “And the Life Foundation will end its siege on ESU?”

“Uh, no comment,” Deadpool replied, brazenly honest. “I am contractually obligated to point out that I have no official affiliation with the Life Foundation, its agents, or any of its goopy boys.”

A hint of peppermint filled the air. “How about unofficial?”

“…No comment, buddy,” Deadpool said, sounding tired. Peter’s heart clenched.

“Then no deal.” Ned looked around him for validation, offering Peter a lopsided smile and a puffed-out chest when Peter offered an exasperated thumbs up. 

“If you don’t volunteer the phone,” Deadpool said conversationally, “I’m supposed to take it by force.”

“Try it and fail,” Ned said, confidence visibly growing. Peter’s spidey sense twinged hard with warning.

“Ooh, spicy,” was all Deadpool said.

“In fact,” Ned said boldly, a red flag that he was about to go too far, “if you try and take it from me, I hope you’re a fan of nostalgia. Because I’m going to reintroduce you to the  _ fetal position _ .” He followed up that threat with a wide, beaming smile in Peter’s direction.

“Oh, I hope so,” Deadpool said, voice deepening. “See you real soon, baby boy. Kisses!”

Ned hung up. “Well? How did I do?” He was so proud. Peter had to fight hard to stay neutral.

Beck, who had no such reservations, palmed his face before rolling his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I think you just wrote a check Spider-Man can’t cash right now.”

“So?” Ned said defensively. “Wanda’s barrier is solid. Just like MJ said.”

Beck ignored him. “And, by answering alone, you also just confirmed that Spider-Man has Carnage’s cell phone. Good job!”

“You didn’t exactly stop anyone,” Betty pointed out, sullen.

“You’re adults, and I’m not policing the poorly thought out phone conversations of a vigilante. That’s not what Pro Heroes do. And, even if it was? I’m  _ retired _ .”

“Leave him alone,” Peter said. “Ned didn’t confirm anything that anyone didn’t know. And, if anything, Ned confirmed something for us too.”

MJ nodded at that, her expression thoughtful. “They’ve spent a lot of time, money, and airtime asserting that they are superior to every Pro Hero on the market. And yet… they’ve recruited an outsider.”

“They must be more scared of this phone than we thought,” Peter said. “Though… it’s not entirely clear how they expect Deadpool to succeed where the Guard and the Life Foundation are failing.”

Wade was creative and surprising, but Wanda had a reality bending Quirk. Literally. If she wanted people to stay out, they were going to stay out. Period. End of discussion.

“Like I said. Maximoff is not infallible. But I can see you aren’t listening to me.” Beck looked at each of them closely before pointing out, “We could end this siege in an hour if we just hand the phone over.”

Betty and MJ exchanged a look. Then MJ said, stiltedly, “We thought about that. We can’t give up the evidence. They know what we have. They’ll just purge everything.”

“But at the same time, we can’t hang on to it if they’re promising to let us go,” Ned said.

“But that’s where I come in,” Betty said, pressing her palm against her chest. “We don’t need power to copy the files on this phone. All we need is me.” Beck’s head turned to her sharply. “My Quirk is all about data. I can move through it. Live in it. Contain it. Bury it. Copy it, even.”

“But not edit it,” Ned said, his voice warming with the introduction of his favorite topic.

Hearing his tone too, Betty shot him an indulgent smile. “Right. I can’t edit it at all,” she said with a self-deprecating little laugh. “It’s my weakness. That, and the fact that moving data is… well… it’s incredibly overwhelming...”

“And her inability to edit data is well documented by various governmental agencies!” Ned offered brightly.

Peter could see where they were going with this. If Betty couldn’t edit data, she couldn’t be accused of creating it. She could be impartial.

“Yup! That’s what happens when you find yourself stuck in government servers all the time,” she said. “But  _ carrying _ data… as turns out, I’m super awesome at that. I’m like a digital USB. Or a Dropbox with legs.” Peter and Betty caught—then avoided—each other’s gaze. Peter had made use of this strength of hers before, and he wasn’t sure if anyone else knew about it.

“So we had this idea,” MJ said, picking up the pitch. “Betty can copy the phone’s information. Then we can turn in the phone to Dr. McCoy so  _ he _ can pass it along to the Guard. If they’re being honest and if they actually lift the siege-”

“We then can expose them!” Betty crowed. Then she relented sheepishly. “ _ Somehow. _ The plan is admittedly a little fuzzy at that point.”

“The Central Hero Agency cannot be trusted,” MJ said with the tone of someone who had been through this argument before. “And SHIELD is sketchy.”

She pivoted to MJ, her eyes rounding. “Well, I think-”

“And you’ve just decided to do this,” Beck said abruptly. “On the behalf of everyone here. All by yourselves.”

For a man who’d let a bunch of students (and a vigilante) pick up a call on a cannibal’s phone, he was suddenly and awfully concerned about their initiative taking. Where was this worry before? Betty was visibly wilting at the audible disapproval in his voice, and Ned was staring at his hands.

But MJ looked him firm in the eye. “Of course not,” she said in a way that also said don’t be stupid. “It’s an idea we came up with. If Dr. McCoy vetoes it, he vetoes it. No harm, no foul.” Her frown flattened into a thin line. “We might just be students… but this is an extraordinary situation. We need all of the ideas we can get.”

“It is an extremely bad idea,” Beck said. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hand, pushing it back. He looked off into the corner, deep in thought. Then he swept his eyes back to them, expression resigned. “You’re committed to the plan, then.”

“We don’t have a whole lot of options here beyond waiting them out and hoping people start asking questions,” Peter said reasonably.

“What about you?” Beck said, looking down at Betty. “This harebrained scheme of hers puts you in a lot of danger, you know. If there is even a shred of truth in the stories that come out today, then you know that the Guard is to be feared.” Crossing his arms, he leaned forward, bending towards her. “But say we get past today. Say we get to a real investigation. Do you realize how much of that will be on you too? You’re not as impartial as you think. You’re not a piece of technology. You will be questioned. Interrogated. Put on trial. By the end of this, the Guards will know your face. Are you ready to deal with that?”

Betty’s expression went through a subtle series of emotions as Beck spoke. Stubbornness. Anxiety. Determination. Fear. She blanched a little when Beck pointed out her loss of anonymity, but the gaze she directed up at him towards the end of Beck’s little speech blazed with her commitment.

“Absolutely.” 

Beck, if anything, seemed to sag a little at that. “Very well,” he said gravely. Shaking his head, he started to turn for the door. He paused, looking at Betty. “What did you say your name was?”

“Betty Brant.” She cocked her head to the side. “Why?”


	15. Chapter 15

An hour later, Peter woke up again to the feeling of a man by his bed. This time, he didn’t wake up violently. In fact, he barely woke up at all, even when the man bent his arm at the elbow and scribbled notes on a piece of paper. Peter sat up slowly, bewildered when he tried to rub at his face only to encounter a mask instead. He made a gruff questioning noise in the back of his throat.

“You think that’s bad? Have a thought for those of us who have to take your temperature without moving your suit or your mask.”

Peter looked up sharply. Harry was next to him, head close. He was sitting on the edge of Peter’s bed, most of his focus on his clipboard, but when he felt Peter moved, he moved also, catching his gaze.

“Hey,” Harry said softly. “I’m the guy with the healing Quirk. Sorry I’m so late.”

There were excellent reasons for his tardiness, and they were written all over him. His skin was incredibly pale, and his eyes were bloodshot. His normally perfect hair was standing straight up as if he’d been running his hands through it all day. His collar was at an odd angle, uncharacteristically wrinkled. His lids were heavier than usual. All of this was clear evidence that the man in front of him was on the verge of dropping into deep Quirk exhaustion, but when he took Peter’s pulse, his hands were steady and his voice was calm as he walked Peter through an explanation of what he was doing.

Peter submitted to everything without making a peep. Harry had incredible potential as a healer. It was really too bad that he couldn’t see it for himself.

“Your healing factor kicked in a while ago,” Harry told him while examining the bite wound on his shoulder. “Suppose that’s the reason why you haven’t bled out already. Carnage’s teeth are nasty.”

Peter bit down on the reflexive and more academic questions that bubbled up in his throat, choosing to instead focus on that last statement. “You’re familiar with him?” He tried to keep his voice at a deeper register than his normal habit, and he found, for once, that it wasn’t very hard. His throat was sore and was an unexpected aid in the process.

Harry paused at his question. “Some,” he admitted. “He’s… an unpleasant person. Even before the…” Harry paused again, then gestured at his face with a bloodied piece of gauze.

“Artificial Quirk?” Peter rasped, guessing.

“Yes.” Harry went back to examining the wound—checking for more  _ debris _ , Peter thought grimly. That’s what MJ had called it. During his first round of first aid, she had pulled three pointed teeth out of his shoulder, and the memory of it still chilled him to the bone. The next person who treated him found another two in his arm and had wondered, out loud, if they would find some more. Peter had never wanted to exfoliate with a wire brush more in his entire life. 

The silver lining, of course, was the treatment itself. Peter had never had so many people concerned with his health before. A guy could get spoiled with care like this. Last time Peter had been this injured, he had to crouch on top of his sink for the lighting as well as the mirror, and it had taken him the better part of an hour to stitch up a knife wound over his belly. He’d passed out three times in the process, falling off the sink headfirst at least once.

In comparison, this was almost decadent. Like being offered rich chocolate poured over the creamiest of ice creams after a lifetime of licking sawdust off of the floor. Peter sighed very quietly when the orange glow of Harry’s Quirk lit up his periphery. He bent his head to the side to give Harry even more room.

Harry worked quietly, his power stitching Peter’s torn flesh back together. It hurt quite a bit, tugging on wounded muscles and torn blood vessels. Peter bit his lip hard, not wanting to break Harry’s concentration.

But Harry seemed determined to do that all himself. “Carnage is an aberration,” he said out of nowhere. “Did you notice? Amongst the Guard, I mean.”

Sweating, Peter turned his head slightly to him. “How so?” He wondered if Norman had crossed paths with the Guard.

“Riot is Riot,” Harry said plainly. The orange light emitting from his hands cast his normally handsome face into something both sallow and skeletal. His grim expression sure wasn’t helping either. “He’s on top of the food chain in every way, and he knows it. He wants everyone else to know it too.”

That tracked with what Peter knew of him. Of the Life Foundation in general, really. He wondered how Carlton Drake and Riot could stand each other. With distance, Peter decided drowsily. He’d never seen the two share a press conference together after all.

“The other two are strong,” Harry continued, making a face, “but they’re quiet. Just trying to keep their heads down. Firmly under Riot’s control. Trying to live day by day, moment by moment. Trying to achieve a goal or two even while leashed by him.”

So there was a hierarchy amongst them? Peter vaguely remembered being chased by the Guard before they had debuted. After they’d gotten a certain distance away from the bar, the other two stopped following him, and one of them was being berated by the other. The green one was the one doing the berating. He was sure of it. The other one had run off without finishing their hunt, and it was the green one that continued the pursuit.

Right up until he ran into Harry.

“But Carnage?” Harry was saying, contempt bleeding into his voice. He shook his head. “I don’t know if he even has a goal. He thrives in pain and chaos.”

A memory of Carnage’s laugh echoed through Peter’s mind. He shivered. “Yeah, that was my impression of him too.”

Harry’s eyes jumped up to his. They were very wide and honest. “I’m sorry you had to meet him, and I-“ He stopped. Ducked his head. Busied himself with Peter’s wound again. Then, quietly, he said, “I am very grateful you interfered. Everyone is.”

Peter doubted that. MJ might claim that the Life Foundation was circling ESU before he landed, but Beck had made it clear that the Guard’s hostility to the school was entirely Spider-Man’s fault.

Quirk still working, Harry shared a little more about Peter’s condition. Peter’s bouts of sleepiness recently had been a combination of fatigue and blood loss. The first would be cured by bedrest, and lots of it. The second would be fixed by a donor, if they could find one. According to Harry, Elixir already figured out his blood type and was asking for volunteers—and Harry was  _ very _ unimpressed at Peter’s suggestion that they wait it out instead.

“Next time you go to sleep, you may not wake up,” Harry warned him.

“Then I just won’t go to sleep.”

Harry muttered something under his breath that sounded like ‘ _ the worst _ ’, but Peter didn’t bother correcting his ex’s opinion of him, his mind going elsewhere.

Elixir, Elixir, Peter thought. It took him a moment to conjure up a memory of Josh Foley, the school’s so called “Golden Boy”. Despite his youthful face, he was at least ten years older than most of the seniors. He was on sabbatical from his Pro Hero Agency, and he had a monster of a healing Quirk. He was the very last medical staff person on campus. Peter had seen him earlier, chasing around his team of recruited medics. Some of them had just barely passed their First Aid and Rescue courses—that was how desperate they were for more hands.

“When can I get back into the swing of things?” Peter flexed his arm as Harry pulled back, no longer glowing. He was starting to feel pinpricks of sensation at the tips of his fingers again. Thank goodness the damage wasn’t permanent.

Harry scratched at his chin. “I’m guessing… 4-6 weeks?”

Peter gaped at him. “…You’re bullshitting me.”

Harry’s expression was equal parts firm and annoyed. “I don’t think you understand how badly you were—and are—injured. We’re not miracle workers. You still need to put in the work to get back to normal, and that work requires rest.”

“We’re under siege, Harry-” Peter said tersely, getting worked up for an argument.

Harry batted back his response immediately. “And you’re under the care of a group of Pro Heroes and their trainees, all of whom collectively have decades of experience on you.” He got up, dusting off his pants. Hugging his clipboard to his chest, he walked over to the door before turning around to face Peter. “Rejoice. All you have to do now is stay put and heal.”

Like Peter could trust that everything was going to work out. Things had already devolved into far worse circumstances than he could have ever dreamed. How much worse was it going to get?

“You weren’t at the march,” Peter countered hotly, his volume rising. “You don’t understand what the Guard is capable of, nor do you get how much of a threat their Support personnel are!”

The look Harry shot down at him then would have made him shrivel in different circumstances. Contempt, disbelief, and a deep coldness warred for supremacy on his tired features. He tugged at his collar, like the fit was too tight around his neck. Just briefly, as more skin was made bare with the pull, Peter thought he saw something black and green bloom there, like a horrible bruise. Then he blinked, and it was gone.

And then the door banged open, nearly hitting Harry.

A sweating Flash tumbled in excitedly, nearly tripping to the ground. “Pick me! I’m A negative. Pick me, pick me, pick me-  _ ugh _ .” His eyes fell on Harry then. Flash’s body straightened up almost self-consciously, and the two of them stared at each other with surprising—and open—dislike.

When in the world had that happened? Flash and Harry had never been friends, but the two of them were practically twins in life circumstances. They had fought, in differing ways, for visibility and acknowledgement in all the time Peter had known them, though Flash’s efforts stank more of desperation. Especially recently. As MJ taught him, Flash could be made almost tolerable with targeted inclusion and positive feedback, but Harry himself was growing as inscrutable and as hard to read as his own father.

But both were born with money and options to spare, and both were sons of absent or difficult parents. Both battled their peers to be seen as the leader of the classroom. And both, Peter realized with a jolt, had recently swapped from Support Track to Hero Track through the same corrupt channel of Quirk reassessment.

They should practically be besties, really. Instead, they were glaring, staring each other down like a very real threat had wandered into the room.

“It’s like that, huh?” Harry’s voice was very soft.

Peter’s warning bells rang, but not his spidey-sense. His danger sense had never really quieted since he arrived on campus, a low vibration in the back of his head. A testament to the real and constant danger that the school was in. He sat up anyway in a confused fashion, unsure if he needed to intervene.

He was ignored.

“So what?” Flash retorted, a slight tremble to his voice. “Aren’t you doing the same thing?”

Harry stared down his nose at Flash with that iconic Osborn chill. Then he snorted. “It’s your hide, isn’t it?” He walked out. “At least I have an excuse.” This was thrown over his shoulder.

“So do I!” Flash yelled after him. “I’m the only one who…” He trailed off, making eye contact with a crouching Peter. “Oh.”

Peter felt stupid. Still, he raised an arm. “A negative buddy?”

“A negative buddy,” Flash confirmed, a look of relief passing over his face. “Elixir asked me to bring you to him so he could start the process. Do you need help out of the bed? I can get you a crutch. Or! Or I could be your crutch. I’m really, really strong, Spider-Man-”

Flash’s excited chatter went one ear and out the other. His classmate had only two true loves that Peter knew of: the animals he could mimic and his status as a Spider-Man superfan. Peter decided to humor Flash the best he could. After all, his oblivious bully was doing Peter “Penis” Parker a hell of a favor—and the faster people stopped fussing over him, the faster he could join the Pro Heroes on campus in figuring out how the hell they were going to stop this ridiculous siege.

-

A bulky arm clad in red and gold heat proof spandex blocked Peter’s way into the meeting. “Absolutely not.”

Sunfire (aka Shiro Yoshida) had always been an imposing shadow, especially in comparison to Johnny Storm, the closest thing the student body had as an equivalent Quirk user. The flirty, popular senior avoided Sunfire at all costs, which was unfortunate, given that Shiro was here specifically to guide him. Sunfire was a real hero in all the ways Johnny—and really, all of them—weren’t ready to deal with quite yet.

He was focused. Relentless. Intense. And completely uninterested in the politics and celebrity of being a Pro Hero in America. This combination of character traits made him a fantastic lecturer but only a so-so mentor. He was a professional killjoy, according to the gossip, and all students hurried to avoid him.

Peter himself used to be one of them. But ever since MJ pointed out his odd, almost x-shaped mask made him look like a red Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter had never been able to unsee it. As a result, Peter’s knee jerk response to seeing their visiting professor wasn’t avoidance and dread but rather a big old smile hidden by his own mask.

Mostly.

“Good afternoon, sir!” Peter said cheerfully. Shiro’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s so good to see you. Nice weather we’re having, huh? I bet you dread the snow more than I do. Last year, I had to wear  _ two _ pairs of thermal underwear under my suit. Two! In fact- hey, what’s that?”

Peter pointed somewhere behind Shiro. A straightforward man easily embarrassed by Peter’s oversharing, Shiro fell for it, looking. Peter promptly ducked under the arm barring his entry, skipping forward to dodge the hand that tried to scruff him by the neck. “Don’t mind me!” he called, rounding the corner of the small entryway.

The dark room opened up into a large conference table. McCoy stood at the end of it, straightening slowly from his bend. A white board was at his back, marked up with 3 lists and a number of crossed out line items. Battery operated lights dotted the center of the very full table, and all around it were teachers, staff, and standout seniors. The licensed Pro Heroes were already dressed in their gear. Elixir had his head drowsily propped up by the heel of his palm, but he was leaning so far to the left, he was almost in Ned and Betty’s laps. Songbird was fiddling with her voice modulator next to Bobby and Doreen. MJ sat to the right of a red eyed Scarlet Witch and a visibly bored Quicksilver. Mysterio, dressed up in an absurd gladiator number Peter had never seen before, sat across from them. Even McCoy had changed out from his usual wardrobe of collars and corduroy to a black and yellow suit from his X-Men days.

But they weren’t alone. There were four more Pro Heroes in the room, and at least twice the number of seniors. Despite being here for at least four years, Peter was embarrassed to realize he knew so few of the people in the room. But that was what happened when a vigilante tried to keep a low profile, he supposed, rubbing the back of his head.

In any case, the reaction to his invasion of the room was slow but universally bad. In fact, the only person who looked happy to see him was their resident troublemaker, Pietro, which didn’t make Peter feel any better. Even Ned looked mad. Peter continued to make his way in regardless, shooting off small greetings at random to bewildered recipients while pretending like he wasn’t trying to put furniture and bodies between him and one very angry Sunfire.

“Hey…” Elixir said slowly, slurring his words. “Didn’t I leave you in my office with Mr. Thompson?”

“Yep!” Peter flexed his arm. “All better. And I figured, what’s the point of sitting around and taking more naps when other people are running around trying to fix my problems?” He gestured broadly to himself. “Hence why I’m here.”

“You haven’t been napping,” Elixir said acidly. “You’ve been falling in and out of consciousness for hours because a villain play acting as a Pro Hero  _ tried to eat you _ .”

Peter didn’t let that bring him down. “And now I’m full of borrowed blood, and I’m feeling great! Thanks, doc. Owe you one.” He pointed at the medic hero with a pair of finger guns.

Before this could escalate any further, McCoy nipped it in the bud. “Leave it,” he ordered his staff. “We have bigger issues to iron out. And whether we like it or not, Spider-Man is a major party in this.” Beaming, Peter spun on his heel to shoot Shiro a peace sign. Sunfire looked like he’d just swallowed rotten milk, but he opted to ignore Peter’s childishness, dropping down into the table’s lone open chair.

The rest of the occupants of the room settled but not without sighs. Peter was, as usual, crashing the party without an invite, but what usually upset and embittered him about the insular nature of Heroes was now hitting him with a sense of welcome nostalgia. Pro Heroes—and their baby counterparts—were as hard to deal with as usual.

But their resistance to him and his very existence? Predictable. Typical. And completely and utterly  _ normal _ . 

“You’ll have to stand, I’m afraid,” McCoy said, turning back to his whiteboard.

“It’s okay, I’m a spider. We make our own seats.”

With everyone back in their chairs—and with Peter perched on the wall—the meeting continued, spiraling around the content on the whiteboard. The three lists Peter had noted before turned out to be three simultaneous actions that ESU was preparing to take in response to the Life Foundation’s unprecedented aggression against them.

McCoy marked down a few more things on the board before facing the room again. He stayed standing, grasping the back of his chair. “As our guest is aware, we have the opportunity to both end this siege and submit valuable information to the authorities about the true nature of the Guard. It is my belief and desire that we do this without provoking additional upset on campus.” He nodded at Songbird. “Ms. Gold, you begin.”

Attention swiveled to Melissa Gold. “The first action is to move Ms. Brant from the school,” Songbird said grimly, hands folded in front of her. She made a striking figure at the table. Her white and pink hair, normally pinned, hung loose around her face. Her white and black bodysuit was form fitting, highlighted by heavy looking bracers and shoulder gear that were intended to help her keep her balance when she used her powers for flight and for fights. And sometimes, both at the same time.

Beck’s gladiator suit aside, it was Melissa who had transformed the most from her teacher role to her Pro Hero persona.

(Shiro, unfortunately, always wore that stupid mask.)

“Our colleague, Dr. Doom,” she was saying, “left for holiday last night to his home country of Latveria. As many of you know, Victor’s Quirk works best in the intersection of magic and science, and he is very driven to the advancement of both.” Her mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile but wasn’t that far off from a sneer. “Therefore, to keep such an  _ esteemed _ person, ESU has allowed him certain… privileges.”

“One of which will serve us a great deal,” McCoy said defensively. He drew an oval on the board. “More specifically, we have allowed him to construct a portal in his office. He uses this to travel from place to place, and we know he used it yesterday. If we use it too, it should take whoever crosses the threshold to Latveria—if not straight to Victor’s own home.”

“Fantastic!” Peter called out. He started to push off the wall. “Case closed. Well done, everyone. Super productive meeting. I’ll head out and start bullying everyone into a single file line-”

“Not so fast, Spider-Man,” Scarlet Witch said absently. “You assume we have an open backdoor. You assume incorrectly.” Her eyes flickered from the ceiling back down to him. What an eerie woman she was, to be able to maintain a barrier around the entire campus with her Quirk while also participating coherently in a meeting conversation. Elixir, on the other hand, looked like he was dying. The hypocrite was double fisting coffee even though everyone and their mother knew caffeine didn’t do squat to ward off full Quirk exhaustion.

“Doom is an incredibly volatile colleague,” Sunfire said, quickly agreeing with her—though how, Peter wasn’t sure yet. “Many of us in the broader community feel that he is one inconvenience away from breaking ties with Pro Hero Society.”

“And what’s so wrong with that?” Peter retorted. “I’m doing just fine.”

Quicksilver tipped his head back, barked out a laugh. “Doom’s not going to become a vigilante,  _ you webheaded idiot _ .” He dropped forward, catching his forearms on the table. His bangs fell over his face, and his smile became a touch wild. “No. If Doom goes rogue, he’ll go full super villain. No pit stops. No areas of gray. No exceptions. If he’s not revered as somebody’s hero, you can count on him to become someone’s worst nightmare.”

“Projecting, much?” Peter countered. Quicksilver’s grin grew.

“Your speculations are unprofessional and unfounded,” McCoy rumbled loudly, resembling, for a moment, his Beast persona. Then he sighed, and pulled his glasses off his face to rub the bridge of his nose. “Though, there is, perhaps, a  _ kernel _ of truth to it…”

“A kernel or a landmine,” one of the other Pros muttered. She dropped her gaze to the table when McCoy shot her an exasperated look.

“In any case,” Songbird said quickly. “We need to tread carefully around his ego. He will see everything that we do here today as an unnecessary invasion of his privacy. His office. His portal. His country.  _ His home.  _ These are not minor inconveniences, especially to him.”

What little levity there was around the room died under her stern words and firm expression.

Then her eyes moved to McCoy. “But with some… massaging… we think we can get away with one person going through the portal. Ms. Brant herself.”

Prompted by this, McCoy pulled an envelope off the table, showing it to the room. It was addressed to Doom. Having displayed it, he put it back down on the table before sliding it in front of Betty Brant. Betty’s eyes rounded. She looked up at McCoy in a flash, her hand clenching tight on Ned’s forearm.

“What is that?” MJ asked, leaning forward to stare at the envelope.

“More concessions,” McCoy said. “A few I was not willing to make the last time we negotiated his contract here. But now that lives are on the line…” He paused, then said, very graciously, “I will learn how to bend.” He straightened up, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Ms. Brant will head to Latveria, bearing both the envelope and the information she copied from Carnage’s phone. She will stay there as a guest until we can be sure the evidence she has to share will not conveniently disappear.”

“That’s nice,” Betty said very faintly, her voice of a higher pitch than usual. “Quick question, how are we sure that this portal thing goes to his house and not, say, the lobby of the Life Foundation? Or to the bottom of a ditch? Or to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. Or something. I’m not freaking out.”

She was definitely freaking out.

Songbird’s raspy voice gentled into something softer. “Mysterio and I will escort you to Victor’s office. We will make sure it leads you to the right place.” She reached out with a hand, clasping Betty’s wrist where it was folded over McCoy’s letter. “I have worked with Victor on many assignments. He has allowed me to use the portal on occasion. While I am not familiar enough with the device—or his Quirk—to read its manual, I am well versed in its user interface.” Betty hung off her every word like each syllable produced solid gold. Smiling, Songbird squeezed her wrist slightly. “You will be safe. You have my word.”

“And my experience,” Mysterio piped up immediately, not one to be ignored. When it came to selling his own hero story, Beck really couldn’t help himself, it seemed. “Did you know I was one of the top ten Pro Heroes in Europe in my day? I have personally been to Latveria many, many times. A couple years back, they even tried to recruit-”

“Europe? So I’m really going overseas?” Betty blurted out, interrupting him. “Oh boy. Is that legal? No, I’m not going to think about that. I’ll happily break some laws to avoid a cannibal—not that I don’t respect the laws!” Poor panicking Betty seemed to have remembered who her audience was. “It’s just. Um. I don’t have my passport, and that seems very far.”

“Yes and no. For you, it will be all the distance of a step.” McCoy sat down in his chair. “As for everything else, we will figure it out for you.”

Peter felt like there were so many more details that could have been ironed out already. Betty, their token planner, was likely feeling the squeeze of uncertainty. But she also wasn’t going on vacation. She was going into hiding. Some ambiguity was to be expected. Right?

Betty’s eyes dropped back to the envelope. She picked it up carefully, pressing it to her chest. “Thank you, sir,” she said politely.

“No, Ms. Brant,” McCoy corrected. “Thank  _ you _ .”

Despite her anxiety, Betty glowed pink at this acknowledgement. The tension lines on her face eased into a familiar look of determination. She glanced at MJ and Ned for several moments before lifting her focus to Peter and his perch. She was made of sterner stuff than most people gave her credit for, and in her gaze, Peter saw the resolute, unwavering person who had promised him, quite seriously, to break the internet over his secret identity.

Realizing she was looking at him for comfort and validation, Peter pried his hands off the wall to give her a double thumbs up. She grinned.

“So. Anyone have final thoughts on our first line of attack?” McCoy asked. At the head shakes around the table, he nodded once. “Very well. Moving on…”

-

The second line of attack was far more mundane. The influx of wounded civilians and the Life Foundation’s encroachment on their property had severely disrupted the normal operations of campus life. McCoy wanted to restore it as quickly as possible. Staff and teachers around the table gave updates on inventory of emergency supplies, food, and water. Their feedback was promising. Their reserves were built to support twice their population on their busiest days for at least two weeks. Given how few people there were on campus now, even the most conservative estimates bumped that timeline up to a month and a half. Maybe even two months.

Their real problem was that it was winter, and they were cut off from city power. One of the Pro Heroes Peter didn’t know led a conversation on how they were going to dust off the school’s (slightly antiquated) gas generators. After some amiable debate, they decided not all of the generators needed to be turned on. In fact, they would only turn on the power for the four buildings around the quad—the science building, the administration building (including the auditorium), and the two dorm buildings.

Buildings at the farther reaches of the campus—the arts building, the simulator chamber, the humanities building, etc—would remain dark and cold until the city power was restored.

There was a bit of a debate on what else would be allowed to use up power. Some teachers wanted access to their computers while others thought it was a waste. Some also circled around the idea of keeping at least one designated cell phone, fully charged, so they could tell when the emergency broadcast signal ended. That conversation devolved into an argument over who would be allowed to start making phone calls first. And to whom.

McCoy cut them off, assigning staff to certain buildings to set up their own energy protocols. While this provided some targeted hierarchy of control, the leaders promptly disagreed with each other on the basics. The only thing they seemed to agree on was that the school’s wired security system needed to stay online, no matter how impenetrable Wanda’s barrier was. It was clear that some staff were already thinking ahead about how to document what was going on for the eventual court case. The recordings would be supremely uneventful, but they would at least be able to submit them as evidence that the protestors and the students were where they said they were.

Peter approved of the abundance of caution. After all, no self-serving narrative was too low for Carlton Drake.

The leaders of the power project stepped outside to settle their differences, leaving the room with more students than faculty. Nevertheless, McCoy moved on, and it immediately became clear why. The next item on McCoy’s to do list was resuming exams.

The students of the room were shocked and dismayed at this decision, and, for a moment, the heavy atmosphere was lifted. McCoy allowed the students to debate him, and he debated them right back.

Amused, Peter watched a tongue in cheek back and forth between Doreen and McCoy about the wisdom of canceling exams. “Come on, Dr. McCoy! Be kind,” she begged, only half-joking.

“Yes. I shall direct all staff to be kind.  _ While they’re grading your exams _ .”

Doreen groaned loudly, defeated. She wasn’t the only one. McCoy watched his students with all the warmth of a lifelong career educator—tolerant, amused, and, ultimately, unswayed. Peter understood his point. Perhaps this was the worst time in the world for tests, but while they were fenced in, they might as well get it over with. Who knew what was to come in the future? Better they finish now while the information is clear in their minds than months and months later after investigations were over and people were allowed to come back on campus.

There was also a sort of peace in the routine and mundane. While it wouldn’t last forever, being nudged back into the controlled and predictable setup of a test might be, counterintuitively? Somewhat soothing.

“I’ll be happy to run through study guides with anyone who needs it,” Bobby offered with the serenity of someone who had already finished his finals.

Doreen pouted at him, but McCoy seemed to think this was a great idea. With the input of the teachers still there, they rescheduled and reassigned exams to be taken in the science and administration buildings in three hours so that any student adversely affected by the events of that day could take the time to nap, eat, rest, or, yes, do some more studying before their respective make-up exams.

“Any student who needs additional accommodations, please send them to me,” McCoy said.

“Osborn, for sure,” was Elixir’s immediate submission.

“Yes, he is the first on my list.” Peter’s interest was piqued, but that was all they said about that. McCoy turned to Bobby instead. “Speaking of which, Mr. Drake, what’s the status on the student headcount?”

“It’s done,” Bobby replied immediately, hand flattening over a green spiral notebook. “Sorry for taking so long, sir. My list is usually on a Google doc.”

“Do not apologize for something that isn’t your fault,” McCoy said, attempting a smile. “You’re the last RA on campus right before the holidays. Keeping tabs on everyone normally is difficult. And these are not normal times.”

“Right,” Bobby said. He didn’t sound like he believed that. He seemed gloomy. “We’re supposed to have thirty-eight students on campus right now. I worked with Michelle to get a list of her ESU attendees as well as any stragglers who joined the march without RSVPing.” He nodded to MJ. MJ, who folded her hands under her chin, nodded back. “It’s not perfect, but I compared it to who was supposed to be on campus for the next couple days, and, well… we are definitely missing some people.”

“As expected,” McCoy said soberly.

Despite the dread of not knowing where some of his classmates were, Peter wasn’t learning anything new; he was there when protestors (students and civilians alike) were detained. Discrediting the Guard would do much more than end the stalemate. It would also set free everyone they’d arrested, or so Peter hoped. And if it didn’t, well… at least those who were imprisoned had Captain America by their side—and Steve didn’t back down easy. Or at all, really.

“Michelle and I are thinking there are thirty-five current ESU students who are in custody right now,” Bobby continued. McCoy sighed, rubbing his temple. “But only about six of them are supposed to be on campus.”

“Most of us took MJ’s warning about arrest very seriously,” Doreen revealed slowly. “If we had exams during or after the march, we didn’t go.”

“And the six who  _ did _ have exams will have a very interesting lecture coming their way once things are back to normal,” McCoy promised darkly. The students in the room cringed—Peter too. “So we’re missing six out of thirty-eight students?

“Uh, well. No. We’re missing seven.” Bobby shrugged. “Those six had exams. Beyond them, the only other person I wasn’t able to find was Peter Parker.”

Peter nearly slipped off the wall.

MJ was even more obvious. She sat up straight, knocking both elbows against the top of the table. “Uh,” she said eloquently. Her uncharacteristic loss for words was somewhat hidden by the return of the staff dealing with electricity, who came and shuffled back into their seats.

“His exams are done!” Ned blurted out. “He, uh. He went home? Right?”

“Without checking in with Bobby?” Doreen challenged with contempt. “What a flake.”

Wow, was this how people talked about him when he was out of the room? Peter’s ears were  _ burning _ . Even worse, Betty, Ned, and MJ were looking everywhere but at Peter. The awkwardness was stifling.

But having found a good topic, Doreen wasn’t done. “He’s a  _ senior _ . I can’t believe him. He should know better! We’re in training to be Pro Heroes. It’s a security thing! Even in normal circumstances, the RAs need to know who is on campus and who isn’t-”

“I know,” MJ cut in tersely, saving Peter’s pride. “He knows. We all know. Get over it!” She sat up, crossing her arms over her chest. “He went home! Not because he’s a flake, but because he was… upset.  _ I made him upset! _ I tried to force him to join me in doing something he didn’t want to, and I…” MJ paused. All the energy carrying her through this seemed to leave her all at once. Her defensively crossed arms dropped into a low hug around her waist. “I regret it. I regret it very much.”

The room was quiet. No one really needed to ask what MJ wanted Peter to do, given their current circumstances. And Peter, the only one who knew the content of that argument, couldn’t say anything at all. All he could do was wonder what she regretted more: asking him in the first place, making him expose his intent to abandon her in her time of need, or having him show up anyway only for him to become a chew toy.

It didn’t matter. It was all the same thing, wasn’t it? It was all Peter, failing at the one thing he was good at when his friends needed him to be his very best.

“So he was flustered then, huh?” Doreen said a bit too brightly in her 180. There was a note of an apology in her voice. “Makes sense. I’d forget too.” She offered MJ a weak smile.

That could have been it. The end of all Peter Parker conversations.

But Quicksilver liked to mutter. “That’s too bad.” He spun a sharpie between his fingers. “Could’ve used him and that danger-sense of his.”

Disinterested in interpersonal drama, Mysterio had been content to ignore the back and forth of the students across the table. But when his fellow teacher made a comment, he couldn’t let it be. A minor bit of chatter grew far serious very quickly. Beck was gas on the fire.

“For what? His Quirk is asinine and weak. There’s a reason why he’s in Support Track.”

Peter could barely stand hearing his peers talk about him. But hearing his least favorite teacher spout off? Swing and a miss. He couldn’t care less. But he always wondered how teachers talked about their students behind the backs of those students. He was pleasantly surprised that this indictment of Peter’s Quirk was received poorly, even by the teachers Peter didn’t personally know.

And he was even more surprised how quickly Pietro waded into the fray. “ _ Your  _ Quirk is asinine and weak. Elemental bending, my ass.”

It was the fastest Peter had ever seen Beck get mad. The man literally started to purple, and when he spoke, his voice was harsh. “Are you questioning my power?” He stood up from his chair, and over his head snapped a clear, glass-like helmet. It instantly flooded with fog, churning with the power of Beck’s rarely seen Quirk. Both of the people sitting on either side of him shoved away from the table, not wanting to get caught in the middle.

“Gentlemen-” McCoy started to say.

Pietro didn’t move from his seat, still lounging and spinning his sharpie. “I’m questioning your teaching skills, you wannabe snow globe.” His soft voice, usually free of the same vaguely Eastern European accent that shadowed his sister’s, was heavy with it now. Heavy with menace too. “How dare you assume you know these kids and their potentials...”

“Oh, and you do, huh?” Beck’s voice came from a distance, but Peter could imagine the man’s smug expression, the kind that always made Peter want to hit him. The kind that said that the other person was being humored, and shouldn’t they feel so honored he was giving them the time of day? “You and your  _ freak _ of a sister… you’re just abandoned experiments, clinging to the illusion of having some place to belong.”

Pietro’s marker stopped spinning.

“Quentin,” Songbird hissed, sounding horrified. “Take that back.” When Beck didn’t, she whirled on Scarlet Witch. “Wanda, he doesn’t mean it.”

“Don’t care,” Wanda drawled. “Beck is, as always, completely irrelevant to me.” She underlined a word in her notes in front her, just as Pietro disappeared across the table. She didn’t look up when Pietro instantly appeared, on top of the table, crouching mere inches from Beck.

But Beck sure did. He jerked back but didn’t get far, not with Pietro’s fist in the top of Beck’s cape. Pietro hauled him back in with very little effort. Then he tapped Beck’s helmet twice with the end of his sharpie, making a hollow sound. Like a young guest harassing the inhabitants of a tiny aquarium.

“Judging by your incessant and  _ annoying _ need to be liked, it is actually you who is seeking a place to call home,” Pietro said conversationally. “Is it not?” Smiling faintly, he leaned in, dropping his voice into a stage whisper. “And besides… freak or not? I teach practicals here. You teach  _ theory _ . You do not know  _ any _ of these students like I do.”

With his helmet on and his back to Peter, Beck’s expression was a mystery. Peter could only imagine it—and did for one brief indulgent moment. Then Pietro’s gaze moved from his colleague over to Peter, landing and staying there with a heavy, knowing weight. Peter’s gut clenched, and his face started to sweat.

The standoff between the two dissimilar teachers didn’t go any further. “Gentlemen!” McCoy had had enough. “Tempers are hot, and stress is high.  _ I understand _ . But now is not the time to be at each other’s throats! Desist!  _ Immediately. _ ” Despite the real compassion in his voice, McCoy looked pissed enough to come on over and rip them away from each other himself.

Fortunately, Pietro responded to this. He released Beck, smiling privately at something. Then he was back at his seat again, reclining in it casually. He raised a humorous eyebrow at his twin when she looked at him.

Beck, on the other hand, stayed standing a little while longer before his helmet pulled back, revealing a slightly reddened and sweaty face. He smoothed back his hair and sat back down, silent. When he turned to whisper something to Songbird, she shunned him, turning away.

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

McCoy barreled through it doggedly, not letting that stop him. “So that’s the last of our operations discussion—thank you, Mr. Drake.” After watching his teachers like a hawk, Bobby jerked guilty at being mentioned. Visibly realizing he was not being called out, he quickly nodded as an acknowledgement. “Anyone have any further comments on these strategies? No, then let’s move onto the last and the most dangerous one.”

McCoy tossed Carnage’s beat-up phone in the middle of the table. Registering the rotation change, the screen flickered on, prompting a password. The fact that it didn’t immediately display the emergency broadcast system message was a fact that was missed by no one.

“This phone works?” Doreen said excitedly, half-rising out of her seat. “Can we use it to call out?”

“Unfortunately, no,” McCoy said. “After Deadpool used it to communicate with Spider-Man, the Guard remotely froze the account. Calls, texts, and other forms of communication are impossible. There is no service.”

“If they did that,” Bobby asked slowly, “then why didn’t they just delete the data on it too? They have to know you can do that on a lost device.” Then, quieter, he said, “That’s what I’ve done.”

But Ned was already shaking his head. “You’re comparing civilian phones with Pro Hero phones, Bobby. They work very differently.” He worked quickly to back himself up. “After all of those bank heists in 2005—you know, when the Serpent Society figured out how to redirect internal Pro Hero communications? Pro Hero phones started coming out with extra features to make remote meddling, hacking, and other interference nearly impossible. Without literal hands on the phone, all they can do is suspend the phone accounts and hope for the best.”

“It’s actually created quite the opposite security problem, if you think about it,” MJ offered distantly. “Like losing a password protected hard drive on the street and hoping nobody looks at it.”

“That’s right!” Ned said, smiling at her. “But still… it’s quite impressive. All that innovation? A Pro Hero cell phone is no joke.”

Ned would know. He and Peter spent much of their elementary and middle school days cracking open devices like cell phones to see how they worked. Ned had gotten in loads of trouble with his mom when he took that investigative spirit and applied it to her Pro Hero friend’s cell too. When he finally crawled out from under the weight of a month-long grounding, he’d excitedly rushed to Peter with a bunch of hand drawn schematics of all the differences he’d been able to pinpoint, some he could name and some he could not.

There was a reason why most people thought Ned’s Quirk was just tech prowess. Ned was great at putting the pieces together intellectually, a level of genius that was uplifted and elevated by his insight Quirk. But he was also just plain good at tech.

McCoy laid out the challenge in front of them. “The Guard claims they are here because Spider-Man stole this phone, and that the loss of it is a great threat to their security.” He pivoted, nodding towards Ned. “Thanks to Mr. Leeds, we now know that the real threat in question is the criminal evidence that Carnage has foolheartedly recorded on the device.” McCoy gestured down the table. “Thanks to Ms. Brant, we will be able to copy and save this information for the authorities while simultaneously returning the device to the Guard so that they remove themselves from the property.”

Scarlet Witch scrutinized him carefully. “With all other things settled, the remaining item to decide seems rather straightforward, no?” She didn’t wait for someone to respond. “Who is going to bring that phone to the Guard?”

There was a long pause. Unease rolled through the air. No one in the room had the luxury of ignorance here. The evidence of what the Guard was—and what it was willing to do—was undeniable. It was shared in the stories of victims. It was written in the fear of the civilians. It was etched in the bodies of everyone who needed medical attention. It was documented in the very phone in front of them.

It was one thing to talk about the Guard as a force to overcome. It was quite another to volunteer yourself to the reality of their existence.

So Peter hopped off the wall. “I’ll do it,” he said, raising his hand. “They know I stole it. Might as well go full circle and give it back to them. Good idea, huh?”

-

Peter walked out of the conference room, completely and thoroughly vetoed.

His ears were still ringing from the force of it. He should have known better than to challenge a Pro Hero’s instinct to protect the wounded. Even the walking wounded, as it were.

“If I knew where to pinch you, I’d pinch you so hard,” MJ swore, coming up from behind him. She still looked livid.

“It wasn’t a bad idea.” Peter shrugged. McCoy ended up volunteering to go, arguing that the ‘ _ buck stopped with him _ ’. Whatever that meant.

“It was a horrible idea,” she hissed.

They both looked away when Sunfire and Quicksilver walked by. MJ and Peter pretended not to know each other until the two of them had rounded a corner. Then, the second they were gone, Peter said, “Wanda said it herself. If they met me by the edge of the barrier, I could have chucked it over. I would have been in no danger.”

Her Quirk was so powerful that the intent didn’t need to be contained within an actual person. If someone threw a rock or fired a weapon with the intent to hurt someone behind the barrier, the intent would travel with the projectile, and the attack would be repelled as surely as if the person themselves tried to invade. 

“And what if they decided they wanted to take you in too?” MJ demanded.

Right. She didn’t know he’d almost surrendered already. “Then I’d go. Better me than any of you.” She turned away from him, all sharp edges. He caught her elbow lightly, stopping her. “I can’t be the hill everyone dies on. Besides, it’s my fault they’re here. If they’ll leave you guys alone-”

He stopped. So did MJ. Betty and Ned, who had left first, were standing at the end of the hallway. They were facing each other, hands clasped in each other’s. Beyond them, Songbird was waiting, her face turned the other way to give them privacy. Mysterio was even further down the hallway, talking to Bobby Drake, still waiting in his own way.

Betty wasn’t going to leave eventually. Betty was going to leave right now.

As if to highlight that thought, the lights around them gradually flickered on, powered by a generator somewhere in the building. Things were moving much too fast.

Argument forgotten, MJ and Peter hurried forward, joining Ned and Betty. At their approach, Betty loosened one hand to give MJ a one-armed hug. Beaming, she released MJ a moment later, reaching across the way to capture and squeeze Peter’s hand.

“Are you going to be okay?” MJ asked thickly, looking upset.

“Oh, yeah. Ned and I were just talking about it.” Betty swung her grip on Ned lightly. “It’s all gonna work out. And, hey, guess what? I get to be a Hero! I’m excited most about that.”

“Five minutes, kiddo,” Songbird called out regretfully.

Betty’s face tensed up, revealing her real thoughts. It smoothed out again under another smile. This time, her eyes were shinier than ever. “So, I’ve been told that going into hiding means no chatting and no internet. That’s super rough, ha. And Latveria is… weird. They don’t have traditional internet.”

“Maybe that will be good for your Quirk?” Ned offered, his voice shaking a little.

Betty looked at him. “Maybe! Like a vacation for my poor brain. That would be super nice.”

Her voice was so bright. Peter’s words were trapped in his throat. This felt awful. Everyone was trying to smile and be upbeat about circumstances that no one knew the details to. How long was she going to be in Latveria? Would Doom even accept her? Would the siege end? Would the four of them ever be together again?

No answers, no reassurances. So they tried to make up their own and convince each other that all would be well.

Betty’s time eventually ran out. At the gently worded prompt from Songbird, Betty hugged them all again—even Peter, despite their half-hearted attempts to maintain distance. She turned to follow Songbird and an approaching Mysterio, then changed her mind at the last minute, spinning back into Ned’s personal space. She pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek and then, face burning, ran off to join Songbird.

Betty looked back a second later, visibly worrying over her daring action, but Ned met her with a wave and a big smile. Grinning, she turned back around, following Songbird like a duckling. They watched the three of them walk down the hallway until she, the Pro Hero, and Mysterio disappeared from sight.

Ned’s expression immediately fell, and his shoulder collapsed inward as he seemed to drown in very real worry. Giving up all pretenses, Peter wrapped an arm around Ned’s shoulder. After a beat, MJ copied him on his other side until a trembling Ned was tightly sandwiched by his two friends.

“…This sucks.” Ned’s voice was shaky.

“I know,” MJ said, pressing her head against his shoulder. They stood there for a while longer, staring down the empty hallway. Then she sniffed. “Let’s get this loser back to bed.”

“Right?” Ned said wetly. “ _ Such a loser. _ ”

“Hey now. I have feelings, you know.”

-

When they returned to the auditorium, they found that the pace of the hustle had slowed down to a trickle. The lights were on now, and several corded heaters were extended into the middle of the room. The reintroduction of power seemed to provoke a sense of unusual calm. Between the warmth and the stress of the day, many of the civilians around the room were succumbing to uneasy naps. 

Equally drained were the medics of the day. Many of Peter’s peers wouldn’t find a better test of their First Aid and Search & Rescue curriculum while at ESU, but no one seemed to take that as a silver lining. Not even Peter, who tended to think that his classmates were woefully unprepared for damn near everything. At least now, with no incoming victims to treat and all serious wounds stabilized, they were starting to catch a break. Some still hung around while other student helpers were tagged out and sent to their dorms for naps or last-minute studying. Still, others took up space around the room, conked out on sleeping bags lined up against the walls.

Looking for something to do while keeping an eye on Peter, MJ and Ned busied themselves with work. Ned took charge of inventory and general check-ins, bravely enduring his notoriously weak stomach as he moved from civilian to civilian. MJ coordinated with staff to bring in more beds from the dorms as quickly and as quietly as possible to get people off the cold floor. Although each were efficient and had a team of helpers, the movement back and forth only highlighted again how understaffed they were. Every single person on campus left on the payroll had been assigned an important task, and, while those assignments were all vital and important, seeing the workflow in the auditorium, held up as it was by students as well as staff, made Peter all too aware of how unready they all were for this crisis. It made him think about how poorly this all could have gone, if not for Wanda’s barrier keeping everyone out. How much more poorly this could go, should the stalemate continue.

In any case, there was an argument to be had for pacing yourself. This, he told Elixir as the man examined Harry’s treatment of his shoulder.

Peter got a hand waved in his face for his troubles. “Nice try. I remember the Queens fires. Weren’t you the one who swung around for days on end, and then straight into the side of a building?”

Peter stiffened. “Two whole blocks were on fire. For a  _ week _ ,” he snapped defensively, reminded of the time. “So sue me.”

They scowled at each other. It was probably not the best choice to be making, prodding the one guy who could remove his medically induced training wheels. But Peter was annoyed at Josh Foley, and Josh was annoyed right back at him, which created a perfect storm of grumpy bickering between two people who probably needed ten hours of sleep, seven of New York’s best pizzas, and a hug, in that order.

But it was better that he pestered Elixir rather than Ned, who was currently picking up random things and spinning long stories about their tenuous connection to his missing sort-of-girlfriend. Betty had only been gone for about fifteen minutes, but that didn’t matter. If Peter poked him too hard, Ned might actually cry.

“Unlike you,” Josh sniped bitterly, “I have full control over every cell in my body.  _ I know what I can take. _ You, on the other hand, are just guessing.” Despite the harshness of his words, the hands maneuvering his head and shoulders were careful. Even gentle as he wrapped Peter’s shoulder and arm in a gauzy sling.

Peter had never personally made use of ESU’s medical staff. It was too risky. The last thing he needed was someone identifying the sources of some of the light scarring he’d picked up over the years. But he’d always heard people claim that Elixir had impeccable bedside manners as well as the Midas Touch of healing abilities. Peter could vouch for the first.

The other, not so much. The first aid Elixir was providing right now was all manual. Despite Josh’s claims, his hands were trembling with exhaustion. His eyes were a mess, and his posture was awful. If Josh could fire off his Quirk one more time, Peter would eat his shoe.

Raw even. No sauce. Guaranteed.

“So that’s what’s up with the hypocritical oath, huh?” Peter said lightly.

Josh’s frown deepened. “It’s the Hippocratic Oath, not-” It clicked. “Oh. Shut up. I’m tired.” He muttered something like ‘ _ worst patient ever _ ’ under his breath.

Snorting, Peter looked out across the auditorium again. He’d vetoed the little room he’d been offered before. While he had appreciated the privacy while he was unconscious, he was awake now. He needed to be seen. Be heard. To just…  _ be _ with others. For their sakes as much as his own.

He was sitting on a table now, not far away from a lovely couple he’d been chatting with just a few minutes ago. Near them, a pair of high schoolers sat on the ground with some of Peter’s classmates, a board game scattered between them. Watching over them was a woman slightly older than them. She was acting as a pillow for another woman with a broken arm. She had her head propped up on her hand and was drowsily engaging in conversation with a man with two black eyes and a severely broken nose. He seemed chipper. She was not.

Beyond them, a grandfatherly man with shaded, vintage looking aviators had taken it upon himself to hand out water bottles. He shuffled from person to person, gently teasing people to hydrate. “I made them myself,” the man said for the hundredth time, a cheeky grin on his face. Very few people had the heart to resist.

A line of sleeping bags and blanket piles took up most of one wall behind them. Most of them were empty, save for a handful occupied by exhausted student helpers whose first aid attempts required them to use their Quirks. Instead of waking them and sending them back to their dorms, it seemed like the consensus was to give them a little more shut eye while everything heated up. (And, boy, was it a sight, seeing Harry Osborn himself sleeping on the floor. Norman would have a fit.)

To the left of them, the guy who gave up his bed for Peter had a new one, and he was sleeping, tucked into a ball and facing away from everyone else. On the next bed over, two ESU students sat together, one hugging the other to them. The hugged student had a hollowed-out expression, green eyes wide and unfocused. The other one spoke softly and confidently, but there was no guarantee that their friend was listening.

Peter didn’t have a name for them, but he was pretty sure they were a part of MJ’s group. He wasn’t sure anything but time could help them. Peter had seen and experienced a lot over the years, but even he was having a hard time processing the fact that he was almost eaten. He felt for his unknown classmate, but he had no tips to share. Most of his coping mechanisms involved bundling the hurtful or frightening feeling into a tiny ball and shoving it under a rug. He couldn’t, in good conscience, suggest they do the same.

A finger tapped his nose, bringing his attention back to the Pro Hero medic in front of him. “You need to rest and let yourself heal up more,” Josh told him firmly. “You want to talk about being stretched thin?” He jabbed his thumb at Harry’s still form. “Osborn may have sealed your wounds shut, but the seal is as good as a day-old scab. You keep running around like this, and you’ll undo all the work he did on you. You’ll have wasted his time, his energy, and, oh yeah, Thompson’s donated blood.” He pointed at his eyes, then at Peter, stepping back. “Don’t be that guy.”

“Yeah,” MJ called out from a few feet away. More dorm beds were being set up on the other side of the room, and she was smirking with success. “ _ Don’t be that guy _ .” She turned away to redirect a freshman before Peter could think of something witty.

Scowling, Peter slid off the table. With Elixir finally backing off and the couple sleeping, he was free to move around again. Not seeing anything he could do, he started to edge his way towards Ned, who had started to wax on about how the ice packs he was counting were the exact shade of blue in Betty's eyes.

He was stopped by a hand on his good elbow.

“Why,” said Wanda slowly, her red eyes cold, “are you radiating the touch of my Quirk?”

-

They took the conversation out into the hallway. Wanda didn’t let go of his elbow the entire time, and the hallway seemed smaller under the weight of her attention. Peter would have compared it to the few times Aunt May had to lecture him, if not for the uncomfortable way his spidey sense kept jerking.

“I noticed it during the meeting,” Wanda said. She flexed her free hand over his captured arm, and little black and red sparks rose up from it, meeting her palm. “ _ Explain. _ ”

She was a smidge shorter than him and had to look up, but Peter didn’t feel any sort of advantage from that. Instead, he felt very cowed, like a wrong answer might turn him into a smear on the floor.

“Oh. Um. I may have wanted to hurt someone.” Her eyes narrowed. He flapped his hands defensively, accidentally knocking her hand free. “But not a student! Just… a very annoying teacher?”

Watching him closely, Wanda shook out the hand he’d knocked away. Peter wasn’t sure how her reality bending Quirk works, so he tried to emit as much trustworthy energy as he could. If her protection of the school was rooted in divining and acting on the unspoken intentions of people, surely she could tell he wasn’t a bad guy, right? Nevertheless, her observation of him continued.

Then, finally, she spoke. “Beck, I presume?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter said, voice heavy with relief. The tension in the hallway died a little as Wanda rolled her eyes and muttered something under breath. It wasn’t in English, but Peter was still happy. She was looking away now. It didn’t matter if she’d used her Quirk or not; she understood. “Uh, but that reminds me. I had some questions for you about your Quirk.”

Wanda’s eyes flicked back to him. “Everyone does,” she said with dark humor.

Peter took that as permission to continue. “You said that the barrier reacts to intent to cause harm. How does that work?”

Immediately, he knew that was an unfair question to ask. While most people figured out how their Quirks worked, their understanding and comprehension of the logistics and minutiae were usually very shallow—and for a good reason. Science struggled to wrap its collective head around the hows and whys behind people’s Quirk, and many Quirks defied previously held universal constants and laws of physics.

Sunfire, for example, was a biological impossibility. Instead of a blood based circulatory system, his heart was a burning flame, and the “blood” that pumped through his veins was some sort of superheated plasma. An injured Sunfire was an environmental crisis and even just a little bit too much cold could paralyze him—and yet Shiro was lucky. His body and his Quirk had aligned just right. He was immune to his own flame, and his strange adaptive biology kept him alive despite causing medical doctors the world over to pull out their hair.

He was a medical marvel. A mystery. An impossibility. And his Quirk was just flame, one of the most common powers in the word. If the people didn’t have an explanation for Shiro, how could Peter demand an explanation for someone who could literally bend reality? 

Fortunately, Wanda didn’t read too deeply into his question, nor was she as consumed as much as him in scientific explanations. Only her own. “Intention is a cognitive desire funneled into a plan that is backed up by willpower,” she said at length. She looked down at his arm. “You may have wanted to hurt Beck in the heat of things… but you didn’t have the willpower. That is why my barrier reacted to you but didn’t expel you.”

Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “Uh, great.” His mind was racing. “A desire… turned into a plan… backed up by resolve. Cool, cool. Um.” He loosened one arm to itch over the back of his neck. His mind was already stirring up at least ten different questions, and those questions were reproducing like bunnies. Unsure if he was welcome to ask, he sealed them behind his teeth and tried not to step on her toes.

It resulted in him making a lot of weird noises and vibrating in place, but that was okay. Peter never claimed to be cool.

“What are you thinking?” she asked warily.

“Oh, thank god,” he mumbled under his breath. Then, louder, he jumped into his first line of questioning. “They tapped Deadpool into retrieving the phone, like, less than an hour ago-”

“I heard.”

“Well, I was thinking… how do they expect Deadpool to pass the barrier if the Guard can’t?” This question was eating at him. Especially since Wade’s only motivation to pass the barrier was him. Spider-Man. Not Peter Parker. “And the only answer I have for that is that Deadpool is, uh… tricky? Complicated. Hard to pin down.” Uncomfortable, he slid the bottom of his boot across the floor, kicking it lightly. “And wanting to hurt someone, that’s… well, it’s horrible, but it’s straight forward. You know? And he’s not. He’s not straight forward at all. So maybe that’s why they tapped him?”

Wanda was squinting at him now. “…You’re not making any sense.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Peter pinched the bridge of his nose through his mask, sighing. Then, much slower, he said, “I was thinking… there’s gotta be a way around your barrier, right?”

“There isn’t,” Wanda replied. There was no overblown confidence in her voice. Just clearly stated facts.

“Okay,” Peter said, willing to accept she believed that and even that she had tested it. “But what if there was? Because, if there was? Deadpool could find it.”

Wade was sharp as the swords he carried around. He could figure anything out if he put his mind to it. Peter’s BS would have been figured out in a nanosecond if Wade hadn’t been so laid back about it. If he hadn’t seen Peter’s truth as a gift to earn instead of facts he was entitled to.

Wanda heaved out an annoyed breath. She turned away from him, but her eyes came back eventually. Peter could tell the second she started to humor him. She spoke a moment later. “The barrier relies on an  _ unexpressed _ intention. It cannot be lied to because the information it acts upon is pulled directly from a person’s mind. Their true self.”

Peter appreciated the additional information. “Sure! But say Deadpool, for example, approaches ESU without thoughts of harm at all. Maybe he just thinks…  _ well, Spider-Man is down for the count. It’ll be like taking candy from a baby. I’ll just yank the phone out of his hands and be off then _ -”

Wanda was already shaking her head, frowning. “He would be able to approach, yes, and perhaps even steal things, but the situation you described cannot happen. You no longer have the device, and he will have to confront you instead. The second he harbors an intent to harm-”

“But what if he doesn’t have an intent to harm?” Peter blurted out quickly. “I mean, have you met Deadpool? He’s the kind of guy who will throw a grenade at a crowd for  _ dispersible purposes _ . He’s unpredictable. Chaotic, even.” Another thought occurred to him. “And what if there’s an accident? There’s no intention involved with accidents.  _ That’s why they’re accidents. _ ”

Wanda’s frown grew more and more pronounced the longer he went on. Feeling anxious at that, Peter continued to spew his thoughts, unable to shake the idea that Beck had been right all along.

“What inaction? Inaction can cause harm, right? Does your Quirk expel people who decide not to help someone in trouble? Or what if there’s a trap? Does your barrier expel the trap maker, whose efforts are further away from causing direct harm, or the trap tripper, who may not have known what harm could be done? Or- or you said that intentions come from the mind and the true self, and your Quirk cannot be put off by a lie. What about lies we tell ourselves? What about people who convince themselves that they’re good, but they’re really bad?” Wanda looked at him sharply. He backed up half of a step, hands raised. “I’m just saying, there’s a lot of loopholes here, and I’m sure you’ve thought of them, but I-”

Peter never got the chance to get his defense off the ground. All of a sudden, there were several deafening cracks and bangs, then a long-sustained roar of noise. On the other side of the wall, the auditorium erupted into chaos—shouting and cries of surprise.

But the noises weren’t coming from there. They were coming from outside.

Wanda and Peter bolted to the door leading to the quad. Peter got there first, hooking a hand into the door. Then, behind them, the auditorium door banged open. A red-faced freshman girl stumbled out, her expression tight with panic.

“Wanda, Wanda!” she called out. “It’s Pietro! He’s hurt real bad!”

Wanda changed course immediately, following the girl back into the auditorium and out of sight.

Peter went out alone.

-

The scene was horrific.

The campus was darkened except for a few lights powered by generators. Wanda’s barrier, strong and high above the buildings, continued to cast a red glow over everything. It should have been a sign that everything was okay.

Instead, in that eerie low light, one of the dorms was crumbling in on itself—Peter’s dorm, he realized in shock, watching the building continue to break. A thick layer of dust was in the air, and large crackling noise could still be heard as the weight of the building kept crushing, crushing, and crushing its way down.

And in front of it all was Kitty Pryde. She was splayed out on her knees, staring up at the destruction. A thick layer of dust was caked on her, dark and wet in places where open cuts had caused her to bleed. She was breathing shallowly and shaking, visibly terrorized.

Peter’s arm was knocked as MJ charged out past him, coughing and pulling her collar over face. At the sight of her hurrying over to their classmate, Peter jerked back into motion, quick on MJ’s heels.

MJ skidded to her knees in front of Kitty a moment later. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? What happened?!”

Kitty looked beyond her, eyes fixated on the destruction. “I did this,” she whispered faintly. “I did this. Oh my god,  _ I did this _ -”

“Hey!” MJ barked, snapping her fingers in front of Kitty’s nose. The other girl flinched, and her eyes dropped down on MJ. She stared at her like MJ was a solitary buoy in an unending ocean—and she was drowning.

“Your Quirk has nothing to do with explosions,” MJ continued fiercely, cupping Kitty’s face in her hands. “What.  _ Happened _ .”

This seemed to finally jar Kitty out of her shock. She blinked rapidly, hands rising to cover MJ’s wrists. “I..” She started slowly, her voice very hoarse. “I went to Jubilee’s room to check and see if I left my textbook there.”

“Jubliee’s not here,” Peter cut in. MJ shot him a warning look, though over what, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like he was outing himself. Jubilation Lee was a minor internet celebrity who livestreamed practically everything. The fact that he knew she was back home didn’t narrow down his identity by much.

“I know,” Kitty said, taking a deep breath. She immediately started coughing. “I k-know. I owed her a favor, though.” She looked back at MJ. “I was gonna pack up her stuff and take it home with me before Bobby checked her room.” Her fingers tightened on MJ’s wrists. “But her room, MJ. Someone rigged it to explode. Someone was trying to  _ kill _ her.” A single tear ran down her dusty face. “And I  _ tripped _ it. I did this.”

Horror bloomed on her face all of sudden. “Oh my god.” She abruptly stood, jerking away from MJ. Unsteadily, MJ followed her up. “There are people in there. I was supposed to join the study group!” Panicking, Kitty pushed past MJ. “Hey. Hey!”

“Kitty, don’t!” MJ’s shout didn’t stop Kitty from running towards the collapsing dorm building. A huge chunk of falling glass nearly missed her head, shattering to pieces on the uneven floor.

They followed her sprint. MJ nearly caught up with her too, and she flung out an arm to try and hold her back.

But Kitty’s arm passed through her hand. And then her whole body phased into the building and out of sight. Peter came to a stop right behind MJ. After a moment, he pulled on the bottom of MJ’s jacket until she got the hint and backed up with him well out of the way. Silent and clearly worrying, she hugged herself, staring at the building with a look of hopelessness Peter wished he never had to see in the first place.

Rapid footsteps made Peter turn. Several students and staff—but no Pro Heroes—were running up to them, shouting questions and demanding explanations. MJ sucked it up and started answering them curtly. No, she didn’t know what was going on. No, she didn’t know if this was the Guard.

No, she didn’t know if anyone was hurt.

Then Pietro abruptly appeared behind them, skidding to a stop. He was sweating, and there was a smear of blood over the front of his suit. For a brief moment, he gaped at the building with the rest of them, equally stunned at the damage.

“I thought you were hurt,” Peter said in lieu of a greeting.

“Where did you hear that?” Pietro said faintly, distracted. Then he shook his head, turning to the rest of the group. “Search and Rescue protocols have been initiated. Unless you are a part of the Safety Committee, go back to the auditorium and wait. We have everything under control.”

There were several immediate complaints, including from MJ, who wanted to wait for Kitty to come out. But at least half of the arrival party started to turn around, responding to the lone voice of authority in the crowd.

Peter was not as easily placated. “Do you, though?” Some of those leaving paused at the sound of his terse voice. “And where is Dr. McCoy?”

“He is doing the device handoff,” Pietro said, his eyes darting around the grounds. He was far less confrontational than Peter expected him to be. Instead, he seemed stressed and rattled, not nearly as confident in his leadership role as Peter always assumed he’d be.

Then again, when was the last time something like this happened to ESU?

“Talk to me, Pietro,” Peter asked quietly. “What’s going on?”

Pietro’s eyes finally dragged back to Peter. His forehead pinched, he leaned in towards Peter and said, in an undertone, “The other handoff. It was… unsuccessful.”

Peter’s stomach dropped to his knees.  _ Betty. _

MJ pushed into their group. “What the hell does that mean?”

Pietro’s mouth twisted at this, and he dropped all sense of decorum and pretense. He took a wavering half-step backwards. “It means,” he said angrily, “that perhaps Spider-Man’s number one fan got there first!”

Peter recoiled. Pietro thought Wade did this?

Meanwhile, Pietro gestured at the building. “Perhaps this mess was… a  _ distraction _ -”

“Absolutely not,” Peter snapped, shoulders tense. All he got back was belligerence from Pietro and confusion from damn near everyone else.

Pietro was spooked, but there was no reason for him to start pointing fingers.

It made no sense. Wade wouldn’t have known that Betty had a copy of the phone contents in her. Wade wouldn’t have even known what her Quirk was at all; Peter, with his guilty conscience, never told Wade about it, not even in casual conversation. And even if he did know, why would Wade target Jubliee’s room specifically? That made zero sense. There were other rooms that would have been more convenient to target, or even more dangerous if blown. Half of the building was still standing as is.

But even if it was a distraction, like Pietro guessed, the method didn’t match the man. Wade would have gone after one of the empty academic structures instead—if any at all. More likely, he would have dropped cherry bombs in all of the toilets in the administration building. He would have played WAP over the school’s announcement system. He would have hired a petting zoo and unleashed it on the campus.

Wade wouldn’t have targeted  _ Peter’s dorm building _ , of all the buildings, thus potentially risking Peter’s life!

If Peter wasn’t a factor at all, would Wade actually be capable of doing this? Maybe. But maybe not too. Wade thrived in the gray area of morality—this, Peter knew was true. He didn’t particularly care what his assignments were, but he did drag his feet when he didn’t like them. He attempted to kill Eddie Brock, but he wholeheartedly embraced the distraction that Spider-Man introduced. He got looped into this mess with the phone, but he called first and tried to handle it peacefully. Pre-Pro Hero career, he killed quite a few people associated with the torture he endured in the name of Quirk enhancement—but never an innocent. They had always been bad.

What did Peter know about Wade? Not as much as he’d like. But he knew Wade was  _ trying _ to be good—and what was happening here was the very opposite of that. Peter believed that with every fiber of his being.

Just as he believed there was no way in hell Wade, who was so gentle and so kind to Peter, would do this to him, his school, and his classmates. But Peter couldn’t clarify any of this without giving away far too much.

Meanwhile, Pietro waited for an explanation that would never come. After he finally understood that, he rubbed his hand over his face. “If it is not Deadpool,” he said, “then we have an even worse issue.” His sharp eyes gleamed with resentment and anger, and his voice thickened with his native accent. “We have a traitor among us. A coward slinking in the shadows who managed to kill my colleagues, kill my students, and  _ outsmart my sister _ .” By the end of that statement, Pietro was snarling, and no one could claim they didn’t hear it, especially now that the collapsing building was finally starting to quiet down.

Fearful whispers picked up in the group that stayed, only stopping when Pietro looked at them. A frequent tormentor of students, he nevertheless seemed drained by this response, not fueled. He looked guilty and saddened instead, and in that expression, Peter was reminded that Quicksilver—despite being an internationally experienced Pro Hero—wasn’t that much older than any one of them.

Defeated, Pietro looked around again, scanning the grounds. His sweep froze, his eyes fixated on some of the buildings on the farthest reaches of campus. His expression sharpened. He walked a few steps out of the crowd towards whatever he was spying.

“Those buildings aren’t supposed to have power on,” he said, pointing to the arts and battle simulation buildings. They looked and, sure enough, lights were flickering on and off in that region of the campus.

Seconds later, they heard the screams.

Pietro disappeared, darting off to the buildings in a flash. After some hesitation, a third of their group followed him, sprinting, while another third headed back to the auditorium to find back up and alert the others. The third that remained were startled when a wild eyed and frost covered Kitty stumbled out of the ruins of the dorm building.

“Strength Quirk! I need someone with a strength Quirk!” she bellowed, wheezing after every sentence. She was shivering like a leaf in a windstorm. “I found a pocket of people, but I need a strength Quirk! Now!”

Peter’s classmates ran for help.

-

The lone person on campus with a strength Quirk left was a weedy freshman boy. He joined them in the quad, rubbing at his arms fitfully and staring at the building with a look of dread. All around him, future Pro Heroes were running back and forth in an organized manner, overseen by a senior boy on the Safety Committee. The senior took charge of the extraction process, boosting morale through the force of his yelling and barked orders.

Ten minutes had passed since the building collapsed, and most of the teachers were still MIA. All Peter could think was that there were crises across the entire campus, and everyone there was spread even thinner than before.

Peter watched from the sidelines, fitfully pulling at his sling and nodding every once in a while when his Safety Committee classmate paused in his blustering to anxiously ask Peter’s opinion on something. Peter didn’t understand why the senior sought his advice. While there was little that could be predicated about an actively collapsing building, they were strictly going by the book. No one could fault their tactics.

And all Peter could do at this very moment is quiet his mind and listen very carefully to variations in his constantly thrumming danger sense.

Kitty helped pinpoint the extraction zone. Bobby Drake had been leading a study group in the common room of the third floor. When the building started to collapse, he’d thrown up a dome around him and his fellow students, saving at least ten people. But his ice, as strong as it was, could not hold up under the weight of the building forever. There was a sense of urgency now, and even a sense of abandonment and betrayal.

Where the hell were all of the teachers? This was the question most commonly asked. Those who were there before Pietro left stayed silent, not offering speculation.

One crisis at a time, after all.

A handful of Support Track students got a pulley system up and working to pull and lift pieces of rubble out of the way. This work helped clear enough room for them to directly access Bobby’s dome. Kitty dove into the debris periodically for updates, returning with information as well as ice shards in her hair.

Five minutes later, they cleared enough of the rubble to reveal the outermost edges of the haphazard ice structure. Better yet, they’d unearthed Kitty’s find—a single beam next to the dome. It was holding up several stories of rubble. If they could lift it higher, it would expose a good chunk of that ice wall, giving Bobby the opportunity to build a way out.

After consulting Peter, a few Support Track classmates for alternatives, and a sophomore with an earthquake Quirk, the senior of the Safety Committee agreed that they should try and move it. Kitty’s call had been the right one. It was the freshman’s time to shine.

To tip things in their favor, a sophomore with a sticky slime Quirk shot off her Quirk until she nearly passed out. Her efforts glued the rubble up on top of the beam into one mass instead of many that could crash and fall on them. Then the freshman was up. If he could lift the beam at least four feet for about a minute, Bobby would extend a tunnel out in his direction, giving him and the people he was sheltering a way out.

They were so close to succeeding. The Safety Committee senior was so confident in their imminent victory, he ordered some of the Support Track students back to the auditorium to alert Elixir and the remaining student medics to standby for patients.

Peter watched them go, frowning. MJ had left almost ten minute ago along the same path, wanting to find Wanda. She’d claimed that Wanda was so powerful, she could lift the rubble and hold up the barrier at the same time. It wasn’t fair to pin their hopes on an untested freshman.

And she was right.

Peter’s head snapped back to the building as his spidey sense gave a mighty jolt, and, in that second, the freshman’s grip on the beam slipped. Peter fired out a line, snagging the kid and jerking him all the way back to the quad with zero finesse—and it was good that he did. The rubble  _ shifted _ , settling in a different way than before. Under the new strain, the pulley system splintered, throwing pieces everywhere, and more debris came crashing down, shattering the concrete block that the kid had been standing on.

Many of those amongst the rescue party panicked, running out of the danger zone as they lost precious progress. The only reason the dome didn’t disappear entirely, reburied, was because of the girl’s earlier efforts with her slime, keeping a bulk of concrete together.

The dust eventually settled. The freshman was still on his ass in the dirt, sweating up a storm, his eyes shiny, and his face red. He was shaking. Peter didn’t doubt the freshman had the ability to do what he was asked, but he did doubt the nerve. The poor guy was barely through his first semester of Pro Hero school, and now he had the lives of his classmates in his hands?

Even worse, a sharp cracking noise shattered the air, the sound of ice starting to give under too much pressure.

Everyone stiffened, freezing up like even a single breath would compromise the teetering pile of what once had been many of their home away from homes.

Eventually, Peter’s Safety Committee classmate started rallying the team to begin again. The fear in the air was palpable. Kitty paced, chewing on her fingers and watching as the freshman pushed himself to his feet. He almost immediately crumpled; his face was ashy white. He tried again.

Peter pulled away from the sidelines, moving over to Kitty. She flinched a little when one of his footsteps grinded two rocks together, and, from up on top of the concrete slab she was standing on, she leveled at him a wide eyed, guilty expression. “I can pull through two. Maybe three of them. But… which ones. Who do I choose?”

In front of them, the freshman failed again to get back on his feet, even when pulled up by an upperclassman teammate.

“No,” Peter said simply. Kitty didn’t want to choose between her friends. And Peter wasn’t going to let her. “You have the right idea. It’s a good plan. Let’s try again.”

“B-but I can’t,” the freshman bleated, devastated by his failure but honest when they needed it most.

Peter turned to him, his lenses—yes, even the broken one—condensing to friendly slits. “It’s alright,” he said reassuringly. He pointed a thumb at himself. “This one’s on me, okay? I fully expect you to pay up one day, you hear?”

“You don’t have a strength Quirk,” Kitty said slowly. Her eyes fell on his sling.

Peter took it off, tossing the sling to the side. “Nah,” he agreed. “My strength, it’s, uh. More of a result of an annoying physics problem? Proportional to the size of a spider, and all that.” He stepped up onto the concrete slab with Kitty, sparring her a glance. “You better make sure they’re ready,” he told her quietly, rolling his shoulder. “I’m not sure how long I can do this. And, um, do me a favor. Don’t tell Michelle? She’ll kill me.”

Kitty’s look of dashed hopes firmed into determination. “Right.” Giving him one last look over, she charged straight into the debris again, disappearing.

Sighing, Peter approached the beam with careful, measured footsteps, eyeing the challenge in front of him. Once he was toe to toe with the beam, he looked down at it. Then he crouched, curling his hands underneath it. Taking in a slow, shaky breath, he started to stand, heaving it up with him.

It was almost immediately too much to handle.

A couple tons of debris, no sweat. Barely healed injuries bearing the brunt of it? Lots of sweat.

Up and up it went. Every inch was a source of jubilant agony. Elixir’s warning had been a premonition—his wound split open instantly. First on his shoulder, where it was the worst, then on his chest and arm. Hot blood began pouring under his suit, but still, he persisted, bellowing with the effort of it.

His entire world narrowed to the weight in his shoulders and chest, and every centimeter of his body wanted to give up immediately and embrace death.

But he pushed. And he pushed. And he pushed through it, his brain overwhelmed with the sense of his own voice, his haggard breathing, and, of course, his thundering heartbeat. A very real fear of failure choked him viciously, forcing him past his limits as he imagined a scenario where a second crash of a falling beam crushed his still living classmates.

He. Would. Not. Allow. It.

…But what was taking them so long? How much time had passed already?

He didn’t have to find the reserves to shout a question, because, just then, a burst of cold shot past his left leg. A low ice tunnel formed immediately, taking up as much space as it could before opening up just behind them. There was a stampede of people rushing the opening, hands outstretched. A moment later, Peter’s classmates started army-crawling out of the ice, reaching for their rescuers to drag them the rest of the way. They were shivering and cold but alive and ready to flee the mess that could have been their graves.

Bobby was the last out, and, as the tunnel collapsed in on itself, he turned around in the grips of his rescuer, trying to help Peter even as he was manhandled to safety. He manifested columns and pillars of ice under the beam, trying to give Peter enough time to get out.

It didn’t help. The beam started to roll in Peter’s hands, and he lost his grip. The ice was smashed into powder and shards under the sheer weight of it all, and the debris started to tumble over him like a wave.

Peter didn’t have time to dread the crash.

He felt the wreckage smash around him, into him… through him? Peter looked down, realizing the tight band around his waist was a thin arm. Then he—and his savior—were propelling out of the ruins through the force of a Quirk that didn’t always acknowledge that little things like mass and matter were much to worry about.

Peter and Kitty hit the ground hard, rolling, and the others moved to give them space. Behind them, the building crumpled in on itself a little further, but this time, it was met with triumph.  _ They’d succeeded _ .

As Peter caught his breath, he became aware of a cacophony of whooping laughs and cheers. All around them, people were giving Bobby enthusiastic pats on the back for his endurance, which he accepted tolerantly. Others wrapped their shivering classmates in heavy blankets, trying to warm them as quickly as possible, even inserting themselves into the bundle for good measure. Many hugs were being shared, and Doreen herself had her tail wrapped around three people at once. She also hugged the freshman boy with the strength Quirk who, now that people were saved, was finally starting to cry.

“Nice job, Kitty,” Peter said roughly, sitting up. Grimacing, he accepted a few high fives before pressing his palm into his shoulder.

Kitty sat up with him. “Thanks, Spider-Man. That means a lot.” She shot him an unusually bashful smile, which was atypical of the usually outgoing and confident girl.

Woozy, Peter pulled his legs underneath him, looking around. “Well, then. Anyone else we should rescue?”

At the absence of a response, he looked back at Kitty. Her head was tipped forward, her hair covering her face. “They were the only ones. I checked… everywhere.” She looked up sharply when his hand landed on her shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” Peter said firmly, wanting to nip this in the bud. “Whoever tried to kill your friend did this, not you. It was a trap designed to be tripped.” He released her shoulder to press against his own again. “If you didn’t set it off, Bobby would have, and a lot more people would be dead right now. It sucks, and it hurts, but remember… things could have been worse.  _ They can always be worse. _ ”

A shadow of a smile skated across Kitty’s face at Peter’s grim philosophy. “Spidey, that’s not entirely… comforting,” she said, her tone approaching a tease.

Peter started to reply—perhaps even to lighten the mood.

But then he realized the noise of the people around him had changed significantly. Instead of the chattering of mini celebrations, he heard murmurs of concern. It was not aimed at any one person, but rather vaguely upwards.

Exchanging a look, Peter and Kitty tipped their heads up to look at the sky.

Above them, the red barrier was thinning.

Above them, the red barrier was splintering.

Above them, the red barrier was  _ falling _ .

“Me and my big stupid mouth,” Peter muttered.


	16. Chapter 16

Theresa Cassidy was a study of stoic resignation. She laid flat on her bed, staring upwards at the ceiling of the hallway just outside of the auditorium. She responded to no one running in or out of the room, nor did she shiver at the rush of air from the external door opening and closing behind various people. Instead, she stared, jaw flexing, teeth grinding, hands flat against the blood smeared sheet over her lower half.

Her stony steadiness caught more than one person’s attention, and it even earned her some misplaced admiration from the very foolish who couldn’t read the pain in her face. 

Eventually, she finally broke. All it took was the belated and shaken entry of one Dr. Henry McCoy.

“Uncle Hank,” she rasped when he made a beeline for her. He reached out. Her fingers disappeared in the grasp of his massive blue hands immediately. Tears finally rolled down the sides of her face as he tenderly shushed her.

Theresa occasionally adopted an American drawl to fit in with her peers. It was gone now, smothered to death under her natural Irish accent. So too was any attempt to ignore the relationship between her and their school’s principal. “Uncle Hank, I’m so sorry. I should’ve-”

“You did nothing wrong, my dear. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

At this, Theresa only cried harder. She tried to smother the sound under her free hand, but the noise carried anyway, bouncing through the hallway.

Despite Peter’s burning need to ask McCoy what the hell was going on, he had some tact. He headed into the auditorium instead.

The calm atmosphere he’d admired before had been brutally shattered. Former patients abandoned beds for the injured students and teachers who had made it back there. More than a few of the people they were supposed to be protecting were now following Elixir like ducklings, trying to offer their own help. More beds were filled, and no one was resting. In fact, the only still people in the room were lined up against the far wall, covered head to toe by sheets.

Sunfire. Songbird. JT James. Angelina Jones. To name a few.

Sitting on a table, Johnny Storm held court with a handful of friends, his broken arm bound up in a rudimentary cast. His face was flushed red with anger, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he answered the questions quickly, hiding nothing. “We were running simulations, okay?” he said aggressively, explaining why he had been in one of the off-limits buildings near the edge of campus. “Of what it would be like if we weren’t Pro Heroes.” His expression was twisted up in both rage and grief. “We thought… damn it. All three of us. Angelina, JT, and I. We have fire Quirks. We thought maybe we could set up an agency that specializes in fire fighting. Fighting fire with fire, you know?”

No one answered him immediately. Finally, delicately, Doreen said, “That’s-”

“Don’t,” Johnny growled. “Don’t. I know it sounds stupid, but we were on to something.” Enraged, he knocked a bunch of water bottles off the table. No one rushed to pick them up. He clenched his fist, then hopped down, cleaning it up himself. “And besides… Beck thought it was a good idea. He got us access to the simulation room and everything so we could try it out in private first.”

Beck.

Beck was becoming a common theme here.

Theresa had been lured to the recording studio by Beck. He’d warned her that, because of how they were rationing power, her final project was in danger from being deleted from the server. When she went to save it, she’d nearly been crushed by booby-trapped equipment instead. 

Johnny, JT, and Angelina had been given access to the simulation chambers by Beck, as Johnny had already said. But when the simulation bots went rogue, starting to go for lethal hits, they had been locked inside. By falling into and getting caught between some of the mechanisms in the floor, Johnny had narrowly avoided death himself. The same couldn’t be said for his friends. Both Theresa and Johnny had been given everything they needed to turn on the power in their respective settings, and they had triggered their own traps. 

Songbird had been paired with Beck to bring Betty back to Doom, but she had taken flight, fighting against unseen assailants. As a result, she’d flown full speed into a wall, breaking her neck instantly. 

Sunfire, following the trio for reasons no one explained, dove straight into the campus pond for something only he was able to see. He was found floating face down, his life and Quirk completely extinguished.

And Wanda?

Wanda had followed that student who had claimed Pietro was hurt. She had been shot in the head for her efforts. The instinctive firing of her Quirk saved her life, transforming the bullet into something softer and safer in the milliseconds she had to respond. She’d sustained major head trauma instead, and MJ had found her on the floor sometime after the event. Wanda had been a mess, her scleras red with blood, her cheekbone fractured, and her forehead swelling like a grapefruit.

But she was conscious, enraged, and fully capable of naming her fleeing attacker.

Beck.

Wanda was on the other side of the room now, MJ by her side. She was refusing to look at anyone, even MJ, and she wore a pair of extremely dark glasses to protect her from the spikes of pain she was getting from the light. She was grimly detailing what she needed to do next to a hovering Pietro. 

Rest wasn’t in her future, it seemed. She had already contracted the barrier. Instead of covering the entire campus, it only covered the quad and immediate buildings around it. Smaller barrier, easier to maintain, right? No longer as confident in the barrier, she wasn't sure about that. She demanded a small dark room. Soundproofed, if possible. No distractions. She needed to focus. The barrier, despite the hiccup, had yet to fully fall, and she intended to keep it that way. Wanda’s injuries and concussion meant that they were going to lose their protection sooner rather than later, and she wanted to push that time as far off into the future as she could. 

Not that it had ever been foolproof. Beck, that monster, had been right in the end. An intention-based shield was full of holes. 

Teachers were dead. Students were dead. Betty was missing. And it was all Beck’s fault.

Nauseated, Peter backed out of the room. He stumbled, by accident, back into the quiet conversation between child and godfather in the hallway.

Theresa was still apologizing, caught in a sea of her own hurt. McCoy could do very little but reassure her. “-will be fine,” he was saying gently. He nodded to the man now standing at the head of Theresa’s bed. “You see, this is one of our guests! He has a stasis Quirk, and he has offered to use it on those who need it the most.” He nudged a lock of her hair out of her face affectionately, his smile sad. “I’m told that it’s like going to sleep. And, when it wears off, it will be like mere seconds have passed.”

Hiccupping, Theresa was clearly trying to follow what was going on. “It’ll- it’ll give you time to-”

When she stopped and swallowed harshly, McCoy continued on, clarifying this by saying, “It will give us all time. Time to help you. Time to help the others.”

Her hand flexed in his. “Will it- will it be enough?”

McCoy paused. There was no way in hell he could know for sure. And yet- “Yes. I promise it will. When you wake up, all of this will be like a forgotten nightmare.” McCoy took a moment to rearrange her sheets. “Will you consent?”

Theresa hesitated. She looked at him, then at the other man, then back at him again. She nodded slowly, looking miserable and defeated. “…I’m sorry I can’t help,” she said, settling back into the bed again fully.

Then she closed her eyes. The civilian stepped up, putting hands on either side of her head. A warm golden light poured out of the man’s palms, bathing Theresa in its glow. McCoy pulled his hands away from her just as the light reached her arms. A moment later, she was covered head to toe in it, completely still, looking like she was both sleeping and caught in time between ticking seconds. 

“No, my dear,” McCoy said softly, “I’m the one who is sorry.” 

Heaving a powerful sigh, he stepped back from the bed, and the protestor and another man stepped forward. Both of the other men carried Theresa back into the auditorium, bed and all, while McCoy watched them go with a devastated look in his face.

It was then, of course, that McCoy saw Peter. His face went through a complicated set of twitches. Then, unbearably polite, he said, “If you don’t mind, Spider-Man, I am not in the mood.”

Feeling awful, Peter immediately backpedaled, turning to leave. “Yeah. Okay. Tell me if you need anything-”

“Need?” McCoy said faintly, making Peter pause in his cowardly retreat. McCoy laughed hollowly, bitterly. “He took the phone, you know. The one they call Riot?” He snorted. His expression was bleak. “He crushed it in his hand like it was nothing. He watched Wanda’s barrier contract like he expected it. And when he heard the screaming, he smiled.” 

McCoy let that hang in the air, staring down the hallway. In that moment, he looked lonely, tired, and beaten.

So the Guard hadn’t followed through with their earlier bargain. That didn’t really surprise Peter, but he’d hoped in his heart that he was wrong and everyone else was right. That he’d end the day, with egg on his face, as everyone was released peacefully. 

But he hadn’t been wrong at all. 

Finally, McCoy continued on, saying with a sigh, “Then he told me that he expects us to offer our unconditional surrender in an hour. If I did not comply, he promised they would take it from us by force.” 

Investigate. Isolate. Eliminate. That was the way that the Guard operated, wasn’t it?

“What I need, Spider-Man,” McCoy said curtly, “is a way out. Do you have ideas?” McCoy watched him for a while longer before taking Peter’s silence as his answer. “I didn’t think so.” He walked to the auditorium doors, pausing by the doorway. “The stench of your blood overpowers everything. You should rest before you meet the same fate as my goddaughter.”

With that brusque statement said, he left. The doors swung shut behind him. Peter stayed in place for a moment before entering himself, but he didn’t stay.

Instead, he grabbed the nearest salvaged first aid kit, and he walked out.

-

The unisex bathrooms on the other side of the building were chilly on a normal day. Something about the tiled floors and the tiled walls and the tiled ceilings worked cohesively to keep all that frosty air in place. It was even colder now, but that didn’t stop Peter from ripping off his mask and heading straight to the sinks. The temperature of the water was as violent as a stab wound, but Peter gritted his teeth through it anyway. Anything to help pierce through the fog in his brain.

He lifted his head, grimacing at the face that greeted him in the low light. Then he opened the first aid kit and got to work.

This, at least, was familiar—him, standing on his feet all alone, dizzy as hell, biting on his lips, and trying (and failing) to thread the eye of a needle. 

He needed to be more helpful than this. He needed to be more than his injuries. Who knew what was going to happen in the next few hours? Who knew how many more people were going to die?

Peter dug the heel of his palm into his eyes, letting out a half-bitten off sob. Weak, weak, weak.

He wished he’d gone anywhere but ESU that day. He wished he’d sabotaged MJ’s march. He wished he’d been smarter, braver in his observations in the Life Foundation. He wished he’d worked with Eddie Brock to expose them. He wished he’d rejected the vigilante life and become an accountant instead-

Stitches hurt less when you hurt everywhere else too.

Betty was still missing. People were dead. And all Spider-Man was in the end was so unbelievably useless-

A small, tortured noise echoed through the bathroom. Peter stilled, a needle digging into his skin.

THUD.

That sound. It hadn’t been from him.

THUD.

He listened closely. There was a quiet but repetitive thumping sound in the background. 

THUD. THUD.

He’d heard it when he walked in and had assumed it was the fan, working overtime. But now that he was listening, he realized it wasn’t consistent enough to be that at all.

THUD. 

Peter slowly finished stitching up his wound, patching up what he couldn’t. THUD. THUD. Then he slipped his mask back over his face, catching it on his ears and hair before yanking it all the way down.

THUD.

“Hello?” he called out, his voice wavering slightly in the air. “Is anyone in here?”

There was a small pause. Then-

THUD. THUD. THUD.

On light feet, Peter headed down the row of toilet stalls, following the sound. He nudged each one open as he passed, peeking inside. One after another after another was empty. Until he reached the very last one.

This one opened too, swinging within inches of splayed knees. There was a dent in the stall wall to the right. The source of the thumping revealed itself, covered in ichor, black gunk, and other fluids Peter couldn’t identify. And as he spied on the source, so too did the source spy on him. A white toothed smile appeared out of the mess. Very slowly, Peter crouched down, not sure what he was looking at. Who, though, was achingly obvious.

You don’t just not recognize a guy who volunteered his blood to you.

“…Hey, A negative buddy,” Peter said tiredly. “Why are you banging your head against the wall?”

Flash paused, his face still half-pressed against the wall. He turned his head slightly. “…you don’t look okay,” he croaked.

“Neither do you, pal.” 

And he didn’t. Flash’s whole face was matted in blood and gunk. His dark hair hung over his face, and his normally dark eyes were slashed through with shiny white. 

“‘S okay,” Flash slurred. “No worries. My fault.” THUD. He was smacking his head against the wall again. “Bad decisions.” THUD. “Nasty shortcuts.” He sucked in a harsh breath. His voice sounded wet. THUD. “I wanted to be a hero.”

Leaning into the stall, Peter intercepted the next smack with his hand, stopping the self-harm. “I don’t understand. How can I help you?”

Flash looked at him like he never looked at Peter Parker—with interest. With respect. With hope. “You could help,” he said, as if it just occurred to him. His hand rose, fingers curling lightly around Peter’s wrist. “Help me, Spider-Man. Save me,” Flash begged.

“I’ll try. What do you need from me?”

Flash beamed the brightest, most brilliant smile Peter had ever seen out of him. Paired with what he was asking, paired with what he was doing to himself, it was a frightening and awful expression. “Kill me.” His voice started to deepen. His eyes blurred into a milky white. He rose from the toilet seat, a new set of teeth flowing over his own. “Kill me before he makes me kill you.”

Peter had to yank himself free of Flash’s suddenly iron hard grasp. He backed up, hitting the opposite wall. Meanwhile, Flash kept rising, kept coming out of the stall, kept gaining height and bulk.

Kept changing until he didn’t resemble Flash at all.

“Kill me before I don’t have any more choices!” the creature in front of him rumbled, breaking the stall as he exited fully. 

Heart pounding, Peter flattened against the wall. His spidey sense wasn’t fluctuating at Flash’s advance at all—and why wasn’t it? All this time, Flash had been one of the Guard. And yet… that strange deep voice… it was full of so much pain…

A long-fingered claw of a hand reached out for Peter’s face—then it immediately recoiled under the explosive force of sudden ice. 

The projectile, thrown with force, knocked Flash against the farthest wall, stunning him. More ice bound him tighter to the wall, pinning him in place. Anything human or wounded about him disappeared in an instant; Flash shrieked in fury, fighting his restraints. The noise was piercing and awful and unnerving all at once. Under the force of his thrashing, ice was already popping and cracking.

Peter was unceremoniously dragged out of the bathroom by Bobby Drake. After tripping over his feet, Peter quickly complied.

They skidded out of the room, rounding the corner immediately to head for the auditorium at a sprint.

“What’s going on?” Bobby demanded, looking behind them as another shriek filled the air. “I was looking for you to talk—but what the hell was that?”

“Flash Thompson is a member of the Guard,” Peter said grimly.

Bobby didn’t say anything about that for a moment. Then, all at once, “Flash Thompson is what?!”

Another shriek rose behind them like the wailing of a lost spirit, and they said no more. Seconds later, the auditorium door was within reach. It opened, and a lone person came out, tossing used medical gloves to the ground. They turned at the sound of rapid footsteps—it was Harry.

Skidding along on his own ice-covered path, Bobby got to him first, catching Harry by the forearms. “Flash is a Guard,” Bobby panted. “Where’s everyone? Everyone has to know!”

“Know what?” Harry said, detangling himself from Bobby. “Flash isn’t coming after anyone. Not yet, anyways.”

Peter slowed his approach in the last couple of steps, cautious now. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

Harry looked over at him, cocking his head. “Did he ask you to kill him?” he asked, as if inquiring about the weather. “You should have. He adores you. He’s gonna hate killing you.”

“What?” Bobby blustered. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Something was starting to click. Peter remembered a night of being chased by two Guards. How one had peeled off, and the other had chased and chased until Peter conveniently ran into an out of breath Harry. He remembered the aggressive standoff between Harry and Flash an hour or two previous, and how little sense it had all made. He remembered that both Harry and Flash had been participants in a Quirk reassessment, and how Flash had just said he’d made a bad decision taking a nasty shortcut. 

And, most of all, he remembered how fond Osborns were of nasty shortcuts.

Harry gazed right back at him, perhaps reading in his body language how quickly Peter’s stance had transitioned from friend to foe. He didn’t seem very threatened. 

“You’re part of the Guard too,” Peter accused, voice tightening. 

“Yup,” Harry said carelessly. Bobby took a giant step back. Then, ridiculously, he took a step to the left in front of Peter, as if to protect him. Harry rolled his eyes. “Relax. Neither of us have any marching orders yet. If anything, our leashes were just yanked.” He emptied out his pockets of rolls of gauze and alcohol wipes, dropping them to the floor. He sighed. “It’s too bad. I was really rooting for you guys. You were always the underdogs against us, but… you had all the right pieces, you know? That witch especially. Hell, if Beck hadn’t been planted here, we would have been totally scre-” 

“How could you do this to us?” Bobby demanded, interrupting him. “We’re your friends!”

The casual way Harry talked about this awful day rankled, but even Peter could tell this was a bad angle to take.

“Please,” Harry said, annoyed. “ESU—and everyone in it—is a stepping stone. For all of us. Don’t act like me prioritizing myself is so strange and bizarre. You would have done it too.” He walked to the exterior door, hand hovering over the handle. Then he paused, turning in place. “The end justifies the means. Might is right. And the powerful will always win out against the weak.”

“If that’s true,” Peter challenged, “then why is Flash falling apart?” 

“He lacks resolve,” Harry said immediately. 

He was stalling, Peter realized with growing hope. What he was saying was infuriating and annoying. But in his own way, Harry was dreading his future actions. As good of an actor as he was, Harry was no Norman Osborn. He didn’t actually believe in any of this crap. 

Besides, if Harry thought this might happen, why would he exhaust himself trying to heal everyone who came to ESU for sanctuary? Why would he give them a fighting chance?

Peter stepped around Bobby. “And what if there was no leash to yank, huh?” Harry twitched tellingly. “What if I could make it disappear?” 

Harry looked down, cackling a little unsteadily. When he looked up again, his eyes were shiny. “If you could do that, I’d kiss you straight on the mouth, Spider-Man. And I don’t even like you.” He flinched violently at something neither of them could see. Grabbing his neck, he looked at the door again, then back at them, smiling with a shrug. “As it is, destiny is calling. You have no chance in hell.”

He turned, opened the door, and walked out of it. Bobby and Peter followed him out a few steps.

“I’m gonna free you guys,” Peter promised. “Somehow.”

It was a stupid promise. Selfish too. But what else was he supposed to say?

“Good luck with that. And remind McCoy he only has forty-five minutes left.” With that said, Harry waved over his shoulder and kept walking.

As he stepped further and further away from the building, a goopy exoskeleton snapped into place over his body. Black and green strands ran everywhere, building height and weight with every step. In moments, he went from a six-foot man with a medic Quirk to a gloomy eight-foot monster. The transformation was startlingly fast, and yet, he never looked back. 

A few seconds later, a window shattered, and out jumped Flash, fully transformed into his white and black counterpart. He trudged forward with much less grace, but he too did not stop. 

“This just got a lot worse,” Bobby offered. 

“…You’re telling me.”

MJ came out a moment later, her eyebrows pinched together. “What’s going on?”

-

Morale plummeted at the revelation of more traitors in their ranks. On top of that, strategizing for their upcoming deadline turned absurdly insular, a poor leadership choice when protestors were starting to outnumber both staff and students combined. It didn’t matter that Beck had fled campus after his botched assassination attempt of Wanda; the distrust was still prevalent everywhere and in everything. The result of all this was sullen groupings, paranoid peepers, and fearful speculation around every corner. 

It didn’t help that they were all required to stay in this one building now, and that most decided to hang out in the auditorium. People were sick of being on top of each other, sick of being afraid, and sick of waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel of all this—if there was even one at all. 

Time was ticking too fast for comfort for everyone. Fear was a heavy weight on their minds, and most of them had had very little chance to process that fear nor the grief that came with seeing that fear actualized into reality. 

It was about this point that Peter, the horrible friend that he was, finally remembered his good buddy, Ned.

After the dorm building fell, someone had the questionable idea to stick Ned on the cameras. He wedged himself into the small security room just outside of the auditorium, and had been digging through footage ever since. His review was how they knew how Sunfire and Songbird died, and also why they had a running theory that Beck had lied about his Quirk all along. Instead of being some sort of elemental badass, like he always claimed, it was far more likely that his Quirk messed with perceptions of reality. Why else would a careful man like Shiro Yoshida or a smart woman like Melissa Gold cause their own deaths?

But anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew what Ned was actually looking for. Betty’s body had yet to be recovered. Even now, thirty-five minutes before their imminent invasion by goopy bad guys and their enablers, Ned was still looking, still hoping to stumble upon something, anything, related to one Betty Brant. 

Peter made his way over to Ned. When he opened up the tiny security room, it reeked of stale peppermint and sweat. Peter immediately started to sweat himself, so much so that he lifted his mask to his nose just to be able to breathe. Because of the computers and monitors, the whole room was quite a bit hotter than anywhere else. How Ned was able to handle it, Peter might never know.

“Any luck?” Peter asked, closing the door behind him.

“No,” said Ned curtly. “I think the Life Foundation added a virus to our security system too. Lots of missing and corrupted files here from the last day.”

“Jerks.”

Ned made an agreeing noise but otherwise made no attempt to carry a conversation. He was focused. There were four screens in front of him, and he was flicking through them all constantly. Judging by the shadows and the lighting, the bottom two monitors were live feeds and the top two were recorded. 

A fifth monitor came in the form of a laptop hooked up to the station. There was a long list of files to go through, according to that screen. Ned wasn’t even halfway through. There was no way he’d be able to finish within a day, let alone within a half hour. 

“Maybe there’s another way to find her?” Peter suggested gradually.

The endless clicking paused. Then- 

“How?” Ned asked hopelessly, rubbing at his eyes.

Peter leaned against the wall, his legs crossing at his ankles. “How did you find her the first time?”

Ned huffed out a small laugh. “I was fiddling with some tech,” he said, tone thick with nostalgia. “Nothing special. It picked up on her, though. Took me a while to recognize the pattern and repeat back to her so we could talk. Binaries and morse code, mostly.” 

Ned looked incredibly sad. This seemed to be upsetting him more than helping him. Peter wracked his brain for ideas. “So there isn’t a signal she gives off or something? Or a code?” When Ned just looked at him tiredly, Peter went off in a different direction. “Or what about that little gizmo you made her? Can we track that? She’s always wearing it...”

Ned blinked at that. “Oh. This?” He pulled out the little invention Peter was talking about, the twin to Betty’s necklace. Ned had once referred to it as two cups on a string. Could they use it to follow Betty to the other side?

As if sensing Peter’s attention, the circular little thing popped up and then flipped over idly under its own effort. Its lever arms flapped twice like a bird. 

“No,” Ned said gloomily. “There’s no tracking it. Didn’t want her to broadcast her existence to everyone. So hers is more of a… receiver? Sort of.” He petted the top of his invention with a finger, pointlessly sliding the pad of it over shiny metal. “It’s mine that gives off the signal, anyway.” Ned paused, then wilted. “…I should have thought about that, huh?”

The gizmo was humming in his hand, eating up all of the affection. Peter squatted, looking at it carefully, fixated on the noise it was giving off. Hadn’t this happened before?

Ned kept talking, lamenting about different ideas he’d had to help Betty out further. He’d wanted to make the gizmo smaller, for one, especially after she started wearing it like a necklace. It was as big as a pool ball, he argued, though it was easily half that size. 

While Ned vented out his regrets, Peter said nothing at all, watching the little thing as the humming noise changed into a distinct E sound. Then a hard D sound. Then the humming that Peter couldn’t make out suddenly cleared into a clear N sound. Then the E again. Then that hard D.

N.E.D.

The little gizmo somersaulted one more time over Ned’s palm. Then it abruptly started heating up, turning a white blue. 

Ned might have missed the noise, but he couldn’t miss the metal ball trying to burn a brand into his fingers. He yelped, tossing it at the table and shaking out his hand in pain. This caused something like a spark to fly—and that spark seemed contagious.

It hit the monitor closest to it, then the laptop, then suddenly all the monitors and computer towers were vibrating dangerously, glowing brighter and brighter and brighter, lighting up the room like a miniaturized supernova. 

Then a full-fledged being materialized out of the light, landing hard on Ned’s lap.

It was so unexpected. Peter tried and failed to keep Ned’s computer chair upright; instead, Ned went one way and the wheels went the other, and he hit the ground with only marginally less force than he would have without Peter. Ned grunted in pain, and so did the blue and white being on all fours on top of him.

Then the light faded. The vibration stopped. The computers went dark. And all that left was a single blond female with far much too much blood on her, reeking of an excessive amount alcohol.

“Do you guys have any idea how much porn is on your servers?” Betty asked tiredly. Then she hiccupped, taking a long swing from a half empty bottle of whiskey in her hand. 

-

Ned and Betty’s reunion was a mix of chaotic jubilation and ridiculous miscommunication. 

(“You’re the virus!” Ned had blurted out with joy. He said this instead of a hello.

“Oh, so I’m a virus now, huh?” Betty had replied cattily, face beet red.)

Between that and the fact that Betty was very drunk, it was difficult to get a word in edgewise, let alone share updates. Perched on top of Ned, Betty was plenty happy to talk, but she spun wildly between indictments on their device storage policies and a blow-by-blow explanation of what happened to her the second she left their eyesight. 

But, nevertheless, the picture started piecing itself together.

When things started going wrong, it was Songbird who told her to run, and in any way she could. It was Sunfire who had caught Beck in the act of orchestrating Songbird’s death. There were missing files and corruption because Betty had jumped into any data she could, hiding and grabbing evidence at the same time, planning on sharing it all once she was able to reach the outside. 

But, even with the generators on, they were still on a closed network, powered only by wires and local servers. They had no connection to the internet or any clouds. She couldn’t even ride a text message to freedom because of the emergency broadcast signal bricking all cell phones. After fleeing Beck, she found herself stuck, ricocheting around from computer to security camera to server like a bouncy ball doomed to a perpetually opening and closing drawer. 

She manifested herself back in the real world several times, hoping to find friends or teachers or even a new way out. But these attempts never went well. She almost got caught in the collapsing dorm building at one point. At another, she materialized right in front of a pair of sleepy Life Foundation agents ransacking the humanities building. 

She’d run into Riot. She’d run into Carnage.

But she’d also run into Deadpool.

“Beck told him I had the contents of Carnage’s phone,” she revealed with a whine. “He printed out a picture of me and everything. He said he was supposed to get rid of that information ‘ _ at all costs _ ’. Meaning, get rid of me! What a creep!”

Peter was deeply hurt by this. “I can’t- Wade-” He tried and failed to align this judgement of Wade with the Wade he knew. 

Then Betty’s eyes bugged out. She crawled over Ned to Peter, kneeing her sort-of-boyfriend twice. “No. No no no no.” She flattened Peter’s face between her palm and a sweaty whiskey bottle. “No.”

“Gonna need more than that,” Peter said, voice made weird by compressed cheeks.

Betty shook him once. “Beck’s the creep. Deadpool… you were right about him. You were so right.” She settled back on her heels, knocking into Ned. Her eyes welled up with tears. “He is a good noodle.” This, she wailed.

Peter blinked rapidly. “…When have I ever said that?” he asked, appalled. 

Was Betty a weepy drunk or an angry drunk? The world may never know. 

Betty sniffled. “Do you want to see him?”

Peter’s face heated up. “I- yes? Generally? I mean-”

“Betty,” Ned said, “What are you-” He squeaked, bending backwards as Betty flung her arm out at the dark computer. A white-blue spark lit up the station immediately. At the shocked expression he shared with Peter, Peter guessed Ned wasn’t familiar with this aspect of Betty’s Quirk. 

On all of the monitors, only one video played—a grainy, downward facing camera covering a hall in one of the athletics buildings. 

Peter stood, untangling himself from the mess of human bodies on the floor. Ned and Betty—one far more unsteadily than the other—followed suit. Peter had a moment to orientate himself with where this recording was taken. A broken open door to the left marked the simulation room that took two students' lives. Peter focused on it, distracted for a moment. Then, on the screen, Betty tore past it, stopping roughly in the middle of the hallway when she hit the dead end of the hall. 

Then she turned around, hands in fists at her sides. The recorded version of her was visibly distraught—and notably sober and far cleaner than she was in real life. 

“I can’t believe you’d do this!” Past-Betty cried out, her voice distorted by the security camera’s microphone. She backed up steadily, a step at a time, retreating.

And the person she was retreating from lumbered into view. The masked head came first. Then the handles of twin swords. A broad torso proceeded, oddly enough, two raised hands. Wade.

“I’m- it’s… It’s nothing personal, BB. It’s the Agency. I just-” Wade froze in place. Then he swayed, groaning loudly. With his back to the camera, all they could see was the defeated collapse of his shoulders, the way his hands fell to his sides. “…Fuck me. I can’t do this. Nate’s right. I’ve turned into a bleeding heart somehow. Fuck. Fuck!” At the shout, past-Betty flinched back. He lifted a quelling hand at her, rubbing at his face with the other one. “Look. I’m sorry. You’re just a-” 

He stopped again. The explosion and variety of curses he let out in his palm would have gotten this recording banned in several countries. 

Bravely, past-Betty ventured a few steps closer, tentatively creeping. Wade looked up at her. Seeing something in his mask, she surged forward the last couple of steps, hugging him tightly. Peter remembered she’d already watched several people die at this point, so he wasn’t surprised when she let out a loud wounded noise into Wade’s chest, an expression of pain that only grew louder when Wade’s long arms wrapped around her. 

“It’s gonna be okay, Beebs,” Wade promised, audibly panicking. “Somehow.” He freed one hand to dig around in his belt, pulling a familiar bottle of whiskey out of a bulging pocket. He popped the top with his thumb, then pushed it into her chest. “I’m gonna tell you what my father told me.” He cleared his throat importantly. “‘Drink your troubles away. Everyone else is the problem, not you. AA is for sissies, and you’re not an alcoholic. You can stop whenever you want.’” 

Water patted her hair, gazing up at the ceiling contemplatively. “…In hindsight, he was kind of a shit head. Anyways, atta girl. Bottoms up.” Betty was taking a careful sip of the bottle now in the recording, her face flexing with concentration. “Listen, Betty Boop, I gotta know. Is Peter… Is Peter-” 

Betty’s eyes had fallen somewhere behind Wade. She let out a tiny scream, backing up from Wade. He spun around, whipping out a sword, and he backed up too, muscles tensed and white eyes narrowed to tiny slits. 

“…So you’re the one who’s culling our backup dancers,” said a two-tone voice. Carnage walked into the frame, still dripping deadened goo. Instead of the half-and-half look he’d sported the last time Peter had seen him, the remaining exoskeleton had focused itself primarily around Carnage’s torso, head, and arms. It fit him unevenly, gaping in places like melted Gak. 

Wade stayed between Betty and Carnage. “You know me!” he said brightly. “I don’t share the stage with just anyone...”

“ _ Boring _ ,” Carnage said with feeling, hacking up a chunk of flesh. He caught it with his hand and let it drop to the ground. “And we had such high hopes for you.” 

The tone was mocking and sarcastic, and Wade never responded well to being the butt of other people’s jokes. “We, as in the sentient pieces of chewed up garbage that make up the Guard? We, the Life Foundation? Or we, the ass kissing Central Hero Agency who put me up to this shit?” Wade sneered, his voice deepening. “Trick question, pumpkin fucker. I ain’t interested in working for any of you. Not anymore.” He pulled out his other sword, twirling his wrist. “Say, you think Pierce accepts resignation letters if they’re written in broken bodies? Asking for a friend.”

Carnage didn’t respond, screeching instead. He leapt forward, claws bared. Wade’s masterful use of his blades made a mess of his hands, but that didn’t slow the Guard down. Carnage leapt up to the ceiling, his damaged arms stabbing downward into deadly spikes. Wade jumped back before they could skewer him, turning once to yell at Betty to run. Betty, glowing white blue, looked up straight up at the camera. The feed turned into a rainbow of static and colors. By the time it corrected itself, Betty was gone, hiding in the security system. 

Meanwhile, Wade and Carnage continued to fight bitterly, shedding blood and limbs left and right. Carnage kept coming back to the camera, leaping at it ghoulishly like Betty hiding behind the lens instead of somewhere deep in the network, and Wade kept dragging him back to the dead end of the hallway and into a war of attrition. 

Stalling, Peter realized. Stalling for Betty.

Finally fed up, Carnage turned his bleeding stumps of arms into spears again, then into hooks after they punched their way through Wade’s stomach. He used this gruesome grip to haul Wade in, cackling demonically the entire time. Wade used this proximity to his advantage, slamming his elbow into Carnage’s solar plexus so hard that the Guard bent over, his body folding over Wade’s arm.

Then his torso grew monstrous teeth, biting down viciously and tearing at the limb suddenly under their mercy. Wade swore fiercely, dropping the trapped sword and stabbing into Carnage’s torso with the other. When the teeth clamped down harder, spraying blood, Wade released his grip on his other sword too, reaching for one of his guns.

Wade unloaded a full clip into Carnage’s head, but it didn’t stop Carnage from continuing to bite, continuing to chew.

And it didn’t stop him from ripping Wade apart.

-

Is Peter, Wade had asked. Is Peter… what? Is Peter okay? Is Peter here? Is Peter mad at me?

Peter ached to know. Peter ached to ask. He felt awful for this intense need to know, especially since Wade was in pieces in a building outside of Wanda’s revised barrier. Wade would survive—Wade  _ always  _ survived—but he would survive deep in enemy territory. Would Carnage eat more of him? Would Carnage leave scraps of him behind to suffer alone as his Quirk worked to piece him back together? Or would he bring Wade back to the Life Foundation to suffer the consequences of… what did Carnage say? Culling the backup dancers?

Peter didn’t know, and he felt horrible about thinking about inconsequential things like incomplete sentences when Wade was suffering somewhere. 

His mind was suddenly very clear. 

He walked out of the security room, Ned and Betty on his heels. He moved into the auditorium with quick, authoritative steps. At their entrance, MJ dropped a blanket she was folding. She stared, then lurched towards them before breaking out into a run. She swept Betty up in a hug so hard, she took the smaller girl right off her feet.

Peter kept walking, even as his group split apart. Ned was understandably unwilling to part with Betty. Even now, they were holding hands. 

Instead, Peter went straight for Bobby, who was sitting down in front of a mountain of disassembled first aid kits. At a glance, it appeared that he was trying to revive dead ice packs with his Quirk. “How much time do we have left?” Peter asked grimly, looking around the room and finding no teachers or faculty. Even Elixir was gone. Too many people laid still on beds, covered with the gold glow of a stasis Quirk maintained by a civilian. Peter wondered if the man knew he was a vigilante because of this. 

“Twenty-five minutes,” Bobby said gloomily, looking at his wristwatch. His shoulders were slumped.

Peter continued to look around. Civilian rulebreakers were everywhere. He watched a woman furtively manipulate water between her palms, making it shimmer and shine for the entertainment of her neighbor. Another civilian woman pulled her braid over her shoulder, letting her hair glow at the very tip so that a student medic could examine a wound a little closer. A man floated an unconscious student off of the floor and into a bed, covering them with blankets. 

They were all criminals and vigilantes here, all because they were trying to help. With the Central Hero Agency backing the Guard, even students (with provisional allowances) and teachers (with full licenses) were breaking the law. Carnage’s behavior gave them no reason to believe they’d survive this stalemate, but even if they did, every helper here and on this campus was going to be in the wrong. History was always written by the victors. The Life Foundation would ensure that if they weren’t completely disappeared from the narrative, they would at least be vilified. 

There was no difference between any of them in the room. So why pretend there was? 

“Could you do something for me?”

Bobby sat up straight in his chair. “Anything,” he said immediately, a touch of color on his face.

Peter paused at that. Not having time to unpack that reaction by his usually mellow and uninterested RA, he moved on. “I want you to get everyone who is willing to fight back against the Guard to join me in the hallway in two minutes.”

“Okay,” Bobby said with a nod, clearly already thinking. He abandoned an ice pack and stood up from his chair, pausing only when Peter’s hand landed on his arm.

“You don’t understand what I’m asking,” Peter said carefully. 

Bobby was the cream of the crop, as far as Quirks went. No one ever looked at him and doubted his power or his ability to become a Pro Hero. He had never been challenged by power classing in this country, and he had thus never had reason to challenge the status quo himself. He held the same biases that uplifted him amongst his peers, and Peter knew this because they’d shared a handful of classes over the years. 

In fact, Peter had a vivid memory of a practical group exam in sophomore year. Bobby had been assigned as their team captain in a capture the flag scenario. Who had Bobby left in the flag room to mill around aimlessly without marching orders? Every single Support Track student assigned to his team.

It was a poor use of their resources. One of Peter’s Support classmates had an invisibility Quirk, and another had eagle eyesight. Even without his secret vigilante persona, Peter “Sticky McGee” Parker himself could have been a boon in the advancing party. If the flag landed in his hand, no one was taking it from him.

They had failed, to no one’s surprise. 

They couldn’t fail now.

“When I say everyone, I mean everyone,” Peter said. “The Quirked. The Quirkless. Hero Track. Support Track. Non-licensed staff. Civilians off the street. Everyone who is willing. Can you do that?”

The expression that passed over Bobby’s face was complicated. “…Yes,” he said after a beat. There was clear doubt in his voice but that wasn’t an issue as long as he did what needed to be done. Thankfully, Bobby didn’t seem inclined to argue with him.

“Good.” Peter turned around and started to walk away.

“Uh. What are we going to do?” Bobby said, calling out to him.

Peter paused. Then, with a faint smile under his mask, he turned and said, “We’re going to crash the teacher’s meeting.  _ All of us _ .”

-

“This is highly irregular,” McCoy was sputtering. If his skin wasn’t already blue, he’d be red by now. As it was, he was turning a faint purple.

But more and more people filled into the conference room, eating up the space and disrupting the flow of the planning operations. 

Not that there was much going on. There were gaping voids around the table from people who should have been there. Some, like the students, had been pushed out of the conversations. Others were dead. And, judging by a quick glance at the white board, it appeared that the only plan the teachers had was to buckle down under Wanda’s barrier some more and pray they could hold out long enough for people on the outside to start asking the important questions.

At least surrender wasn’t an option. Like Peter, the teachers seemed to think that submission would only lead to bloodshed, pain, imprisonment, and defamation. By the way the words Central Hero Agency had been crossed out, it seemed like they also had little faith that their parent agency would be of help. Why would they when the Agency was the party that let the Guard run rampant in the first place?

“What’s the meaning of this?” McCoy demanded, eyes roving around the room. “Michelle-”

“Hi,” MJ said. “Believe it or not, I am not the one leading the mob this time.” She seemed smug about it regardless. “Spidey, you got something to share?”

The rest of the people shuffled in. Bobby had somehow scrounged up seventeen volunteers, a good percentage of the folk weren’t yet seriously injured—and even some who were, judging by Johnny Storm’s proud push to the front of the group. Including the staff already in the room, this brought their numbers up to twenty-three.

This. He could work with this. 

Peter looked at McCoy. He swallowed past a taste of bile and pressed on. “You’re leaning on tactics that have already failed,” he started. 

“Do not speak to me about  _ tactics _ ,” McCoy thundered, rising from his seat. “I have been a Pro Hero for longer than most people in this room have been alive-”

“I know! That’s why this sucks,” Peter said beseechingly, inching closer to the table. “You’re used to shielding the vulnerable and protecting people you think are weak. And it’s made you blind.” He pointed at the whiteboard. “This plan you have uses none of the resources you have available to you.”

McCoy swelled. “On the contrary-”

“Where are we?” Peter interrupted, sensing hurt pride and knowing they had no time to deal with it. “In your plan. Where are we? Hm?” McCoy looked at the whiteboard reflexively. “You seemed okay with leaning on our Quirks earlier. You let people be Heroes when they otherwise would have been arrested. Because it was an emergency, right?” He tapped the table. “This deadline of ours is the biggest emergency we’ve faced all damn day. And you’re shutting us out.” Peter’s mouth twisted. Old bitterness resurfaced. “No wonder your plan sucks.”

For a minute, the room was very quiet. Peter was sure some people who had joined them probably disliked his disrespect.

But then Pietro was spinning his chair to his remaining colleagues, the noise sharp and annoying. He looked at them, then shrugged. “…it does suck,” he offered.

A tight pressure in Peter’s chest loosened. 

Meanwhile Pietro raised his hands to the chorus of complaints. “Look. I know my sister better than any of you. With time, she could turn the barrier into an insurmountable wall. She could build mazes with no end! She could turn every agent around and have them marching off without a single memory of us.” He leaned forward, his chair squeaking again. “But she cannot do that right now. Because that fucker shot her in the head, and it’s taking everything in her to maintain what has already been bypassed.” He leaned back in his chair again, swinging his gaze to McCoy. “You have faith in a defense with gaping holes. She does not. And neither do they.”

“It’s not faith, Pietro,” McCoy said tiredly. “It’s called hope.” The two of them stared at each other for a moment before McCoy shook his head, sitting down. “Very well. What are your thoughts?”

-

A lot of information was shared very quickly, like the fact that Betty was alive, having safely escaped Beck’s treachery. Whatever lingering anger Peter had died out at the very real joy everyone expressed at the sight of her emerging from the crowd of volunteers. McCoy even got up and shook her hand in both of his, ignoring the smell of alcohol on his dry campus.

They shared other good news, like the fact that Deadpool was on campus and that, sometime between that phone call and now, he stopped compartmentalizing between the orders he got from the Central Hero Agency and what the Life Foundation was doing to the campus.

“He’s gone rogue?” Elixir blurted out. “Great! Where is he?”

Peter’s chest tightened. “He’s… incapacitated at the moment,” he hedged. Josh’s face fell. “But we have evidence to believe that Wade has been thinning out the ranks, so to speak.” 

“And it came straight from Carnage’s mouth too!” Betty said, backing him up. 

“The Guard couldn't care less about their Support Track equivalents,” Ned continued. “For Carnage to have noticed it—let alone commented on it—the damage must be severe.”

“That’s right. If we could push back and mount a defense around the school, using all of our resources”—Peter pointedly gestured at everyone who had crashed the meeting with him—“we might even be able to slip someone by.”

“Someone who can go get some help,” Bobby pressed, stepping up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Peter. Sometimes, it was nice to have the back-up of ESU’s number one senior. They finally were getting somewhere. 

McCoy’s gaze moved between the four of them. He breathed in for a moment, then said, “So we’re saying we’re not as completely surrounded as we once were.” He looked around the room. “Can anyone verify that?”

“I can,” came a voice from the doorway. It was unexpected. Peter’s head snapped to it immediately, and so did MJ’s. 

Nearly completely out of the room, Eddie Brock was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and expression unimpressed. The sight of him was startling—and even a little unwelcome.

“You have  _ not  _ been here the whole time,” Peter accused, swamped in disbelief. He was bad with face and names, but Eddie Brock wasn’t the kind of man you overlooked.

“Nope, just crossed your little barrier about ten minutes ago.” Eddie pushed away from the wall, seeming to both enjoy and hate being the center of attention. Or, at least, being the bad guy. He looked around curiously and stepped deeper into the room. The crowd parted for him. 

“Now, if I wasn’t blacklisted from my entire profession, I’d have a lot of material here about the failure of ESU to protect its students.” His face scrunched up. “Do you know how many facilities like this have been burned to the ground in the last ten years by villains? I can think of at least twenty in the continental US. Such lack of preparation is almost… criminal.” His eyes dropped on McCoy’s face last. With an insincere smile, he introduced himself. “Eddie Brock.”

“Why are you here?” MJ demanded.

Amused, Eddie swung towards her. “The ice boy said all hands on deck. Anyone who wanted to be a Hero could come. So here I am. Sign me up.” Eddie bent his head lightly, as if agreeing to something. “Or, more specifically-” His exoskeleton snapped in place, giving him height and weight in seconds. “Sign us up.”

-

The last thing they needed with minutes on the clock was a damn dramatic reveal. Peter could have kicked Eddie out the window. He was still tempted to. The tone of the room had changed completely, and Peter was furious that they had lost traction on what they needed to do.

Everyone was, in a word, uneasy. No one was seated any more. Only a few people spilled out into the hallway, but most stood still, just watching. There was not enough space in the room for a fight, but more than one person stood at the ready for one.

“…You’re one of the Guard.” McCoy’s voice was flat and unfriendly.

The exoskeleton peeled away from Eddie’s face, taking with it those white eyes and those terrible teeth. “Incorrect. I am what they would call a thief.” He spread his arms outward. “I’m not supposed to have this Quirk. Do you want to know why?”

This was met with a couple of seconds of silence. Then Pietro decided for them all. “Sure, why not?” 

“I go to a Quirk enhancement facility, right? They specialize in reducing Quirks, and I want what they have so bad.” Eddie pointed at McCoy. “You might not know this, but hearing emotions 24/7 is a huge pain in the ass-”

“I have telepath friends,” McCoy said abruptly.

“So you do know.” Eddie smiled without warmth. He took a step forward, and the whole room shifted with him—some backing up, some going forward, others just sucking in a breath. Noticing this, Eddie stepped back again, hands up. “So. Long story short, while I’m under anesthesia, the Life Foundation buys up the company. Carlton Drake, the vindicative shit head that he is, immediately vaults my ass into the program that creates these guys.” This, he punctuated by tapping his chest.

“That seems counterproductive,” Peter said. Eddie turned to him, eyebrows raised. “He hates you. Why would he give you a cool Quirk?” 

Eddie pointed at him, and Peter really wished he didn’t. Those long clawed fingers did not inspire trust—and it was clear Eddie was angling for that trust specifically. He needed to quit acting like an intimidating and half-feral jerk first. 

After all, not everyone had Peter’s danger sense.

“These artificial Quirks are compatible with a very small percentage of the population. He didn’t put me into the program to equip me with a cool Quirk. He put me in it to kill me.” Eddie paused. His expression eased, and he flattened his hand against his chest. Very quietly, he said, “Unfortunately for him, V and I are… very, very compatible.”

“Like Harry and Flash?” Pietro asked. He kept looking at Peter, almost as if he was gauging something based on his body language.

Eddie turned lazily to him. “Are those the kids they recruited to the Guards?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Yes and no. Those kids can take the Quirks, like I can, but Venom and I have an even greater relationship. A true… symbiosis.”

“How’s that?” Kitty butted in, shifting closer to Peter. She was the only one speaking with any amount of genuine curiosity. 

“Through the gift of silence.” Eddie tapped his forehead. “For me, Venom’s mind is overpowering. Loud, even.” The aggressive manner he had for McCoy had all but bled out. His tone was almost affectionate. “I am no longer deafened by the feelings and emotions of others. All I can hear is… him. And I didn’t have to lose my Quirk to do it. If I want to hear others, I can. I just need to try harder.”

It was on Peter’s lips to quip that Eddie should have tried harder earlier. A gentle entrance would have gone better, he was sure. But Peter let it pass unsaid. The tension in the room was easing. Most people were more interested in this new interloper than they were afraid. McCoy’s expression was more calculating than confrontational. They could use this.

“What does he get from it?” Johnny grumbled, looking unimpressed.

Turning to him, Eddie tapped his chest again. “These artificial Quirks are sentient. They have their own minds and thoughts and preferences. But where they’re really different is their connection to a Hivemind. Their wills, their agencies, their very autonomy can be replaced by Riot’s will in a second. Just as I no longer hear emotions 24/7, Venom no longer hears the Hivemind. You can think of us as each other’s white noise machine.” 

All of sudden, his Quirk snapped back into his body. Normal once more, Eddie walked up to the table and pulled out a chair for himself. “Feel bad for your classmates, kiddos. They had no idea what bullshit they were signing up for.” He sat. Then, when no one joined him, he looked around the room. “Any other questions? I’d like to hear any actual plans, please. This can’t be a total lost cause…”

Everyone hesitated. Then they crept forward, dragging their feet back to the table. The ones without chairs started dispersing through the room. Pietro was the first to sit back down, and he did so slowly, his eyes fixated on the newcomer. The two most annoying people in Peter’s life—meeting, at last. The other seats filled, and so did the space behind them. The sparsely filled table was now overbooked.

Peter stood right behind Eddie. “I thought you were running,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why are you here now?”

Eddie glanced up at him. “If it was up to only me, I’d be using this clusterfuck to get the hell out of the city and disappear. But, like I said, these Quirks are sentient. And Venom…” Eddie heaved out a huge sigh. “Well, he’s addicted to the television now.”

“You know what they say about screen time.”

“Yeah, my mistake.” Eddie’s gaze slid past Peter. “The only thing he’s watched today, though, is news. All day long. Just that. Casually at first, then more intensely as things started to go wrong. And now, he wants to be a Hero.” Eddie looked down again. “Just like you.”

Peter didn’t get the chance to ask what the hell that meant before the strategizing picked up. They were running out of time, after all. 

“Hey,” Eddie asked, looking around the table, “did someone nerf the witch?”

-

Things moved very fast after that, though not always productively. The crowd of people willing to stand up against the Guard was spread out around the room. Periodically, someone dropped out of the room to go grab something or find something or start something up in the name of defending ESU. In various stages of completion, at least three rapid-fire conversations took place regarding different measures of defense. 

Eddie dropped in and out of all three of them at random, largely more of a hindrance than a help. The crux of the issue was his firmly held belief that, of all people in the room, he was the only one who could handle a one-on-one with the Guard. He’d even been so bold as to claim as such to McCoy, who opted to continue moving on with a loose sketch of what they were calling The Quad Defense.

The first big break in Eddie’s arrogant demeanor came right after this. 

MJ snorted. “You’re so out of the loop.” She was sharing a chair with Doreen almost half a table away. Doreen, focused on a different conversation, was on the edge of the seat, pointed away. The effect of this made MJ look like she was wearing a big, fluffy boa.

“Did I hurt your feelings?” Eddie asked dryly. “Enlighten me. What are you going to do about the eight-foot monsters at your doorstep? Write an article about them?”

“Have you seen Carnage recently?” MJ asked. “I did that. Where were you?”

Eddie stared back at her, visibly startled. Then he shrugged. “…Consider me corrected,” he said very quietly.

“Damn right,” MJ hissed fiercely under her breath. They seemed to make a mutual decision to ignore each other. 

The second break in his demeanor was Eddie’s own damn fault, but it was also a major turning point in their planning. Their defensive strategies grew tighter and tighter with every minute, built on the foundation of case studies, practical exams, personal expertise, and the specific Quirks in the room. But as polished as these plans were now, nothing could undo the fact that they were hurried and occasionally haphazard. Nor could it do anything about the fact that none of their strategies were specifically centered on defeating the eight-foot people who made up the Guard.

The opinion of the majority was that the Guard needed to be isolated and pinned down as soon as possible. Eddie derailed this conversation with the insistence that the Guard were nearly invincible in almost every way. Hearing him go on and on about it made Peter remember that this guy, no matter his Quirk’s aspirations, was just a civilian. 

He didn’t run to problems; he ran away from them. Eddie was so fixated on that mindset; he probably wasn’t even aware of the time he was wasting. Peter actually felt a little bad for the guy. 

But at some point in Eddie’s testimony, something pinged Ned’s bullshit detector. The smell of peppermint crept up slowly, strong enough that Eddie himself paused and asked if someone had opened a pack of gum. This drew a lot more attention to their side of the table than Eddie probably expected.

Caught in his own thoughts, Ned was oblivious to him. “Johnny,” he muttered.

Johnny heard him three seats down. He turned away from his own conversation. “What,” he asked impatiently.

Again, Ned was unaware. “Johnny,” he said, dragging out the word.

Johnny, annoyed, pounded the top of the table to get Ned’s attention. “What? I’m right here, you jackass,” he barked.

Ned’s head jerked up. “Shut up,” he barked back, startled. “I’m trying to think!”

Johnny recoiled at that, looking cowed. Around him, a few of Johnny’s classmates shifted their attention to Ned. At least some of them had to be aware of how Ned’s Quirk worked, Peter figured. Their end of the table was both quieter and fuller than it had been just a few moments prior. Doreen got up and walked over to their end, pen and pad in hand, while Kitty phased through three people to stand at Ned’s elbow. Johnny himself settled back, visibly annoyed and trying to hide the fact that he too was trying to listen in.

But to Ned, everyone else might as well have been in a different room, so focused as he was on narrowing the parameters of his sudden insight. “Johnny. Betty. TJ. Angelina. Mr. Yoshida. Theresa. Ms. Gold. Ms. Maximoff?” 

Ned’s classmates were watching him, silent, waiting for his conclusion with bated breaths. But Peter knew Ned worked much better with a sounding board. He’d walked with Ned through hundreds—if not thousands—of epiphanies and inventions before. So Peter hopped onto the table, sitting cross-legged in front of him.

“Beck’s targets?” he prompted. 

“Yes. Why,” Ned said flatly, stuck in a spiral of his Quirk.

“Wanda’s obvious,” Peter replied sardonically.

“The barrier,” Ned agreed, eyes still flicking back and forth. His frown was easing though; this was helping. Ned sometimes described his insights as coming to him in a tangled ball of many threads. To follow through with them, he had to smooth them out somehow first. 

“Beck could convince himself he was the good guy,” Peter said, trying to flatten out this thread for him. “Saving people from the Guard by killing them first... maybe?”

“Mercy killings,” Ned whispered. 

“But Carnage,” Peter pressed. “Carnage is evil to the core. He hurts people and enjoys it. He wasn’t ever going to get past the barrier. The barrier had to come down for the Guard.”

“To make it easier for the Guard,” Ned clarified, meeting his eyes. After a moment, he shot Peter a bashful smile. “And Betty. Also obvious.”

Peter nodded. “To hide evidence for his employer.”

“But the others?” Ned said, confused. “Why? They’re not even the strongest people on campus. Bobby’s way stronger than Johnny.” 

Johnny raised his hand, as if to challenge this. He stopped, dropping it, allowing this to happen. Even he could tell that Ned was almost onto something. His ears were bright red, and he was avoiding Betty’s curious gaze. Betty, who was involved in the conversation happening with McCoy, wasn’t paying attention to what was happening on the other side of the table.

“Johnny,” Ned whispered again. “Ms. Gold. Mr. Yoshida. TJ. Theresa. Angelina.”

“And Jubliee!” Kitty piped up urgently, hanging off his arm.

“Jubliee,” Ned said slowly, as if it was a revelation. Then, brow furrowing, he looked at Kitty. “But she left for the holidays. Everyone knows that. She livestreamed it over her accounts.” Ned was right. If Beck knew she was gone, why bother to rig her room?

“But Beck’s not on social media,” Kitty said, dismissing this a wave of her hand. “He thinks it’s pointless. And he would have assumed she’d still be on campus like everyone!”

“That’s right,” Doreen said eagerly, leaning on Ned’s chair. “Jubliee was supposed to be at a makeup exam too, but she scored high enough in the rest of the class that the teacher waived it.” Her tail flicked in agitation behind her. “She literally booked and got on her flight on the same day.”

“So Beck wouldn’t have known,” Ned said quietly. “Jubliee.” 

Despite the encouragement and information from his classmates, Ned seemed stuck. He was frowning, humming under her breath. He seemed on the cusp of something, and their internet famous classmate was the glue that held it all together. Mind racing, Peter tried to think of more ways to prompt Ned’s thoughts, but he was blanking. They were on the very verge of being invaded by an enemy force, and Peter could barely keep his eyes open. He was so tired… 

Ned abruptly burst out of his chair. “Quirks!” he shouted, startling Peter awake. He clapped his hands together. “Theresa and Songbird… sound Quirks. Johnny, TJ, Sunfire, Angelina, Jubliee? Fire Quirks.” He grabbed Peter’s shoulders, shaking him. “Beck did everything he did to ease the way for the Guard! There was no reason for him to go after anyone but Wanda and Betty… except for the fact that the Guard is weak to fire and sound.”

Astonished, Eddie dropped a cup of coffee in his lap.

-

In some other version of these events, perhaps they would have lost Eddie and Venom’s support over this. As it was, it was very close. They didn’t care to have their weaknesses on display.

“Is it true?” Kitty demanded, fisting Eddie’s collar. Far from the menacing figure he’d cut earlier, Eddie looked overwhelmed. “You have to tell us. Lives are on the line and-” She yelped when Venom snapped back in place, pulling away.

“My life is on the line,” Venom hissed, teeth bared. 

Ned would not be deterred. “You wanted to be a Hero, right?” 

Venom’s face was pulled into an expression of disgust. “And being a Hero is all about killing myself, hm? Then I pass.”

It was a hell of bluff to try and pull off for a sentient Quirk that had yet to move from his seat, even if only to avoid the cluster of twenty-something year olds swarming him for information. 

“It’s not about putting yourself in harm’s way,” Ned countered passionately. For some reason, he shot a narrow-eyed look at Peter. “I mean, sometimes it is, but… other times, it’s about working together to defend your home and the people you care about.” 

When this failed to move Venom, Kitty gestured sharply around the rest of the table. “If we’re all as useless as you think we are, you’re one guy against four. You’re going to lose.” 

“But if we have this information,” Peter said, “we can even the playing field, and you know it.” They needed every bit of an advantage they could get.

“Please,” Ned begged. “Tell me I’m right.”

It was so weird to see those nightmarish teeth pulled into anything but a haunting grin. Venom’s tongue pulled in. His shoulders punched up, teeth clattering together as his face wrenched into a mighty frown. Then Venom abruptly folded in on itself, leaving behind a flushed Eddie. 

Eddie looked defeated. He heaved a great sigh, then slowly pulled his chair closer and closer to Ned. Sensing victory, everyone backed off to let him move.

“Fire does work,” Eddie said quietly. “But it’s not about sound. It’s about frequency.”

Ned was already scribbling things down, the peppermint smell as strong as ever. “What frequency?”

Making a face, Eddie leaned over and whispered in his ear. He pulled away, saying grimly, “You got fifteen minutes to do something with that information. Was it worth it?”

Ned paused, pen quivering in place. “Absolutely,” he said. Then he immediately surged to his feet. “Hey. Hey!” he called out over the table. Conversations died. “Anyone with a background in engineering or creating gear, I need you right now.” Ned was already making his way to the door of the room. He paused at the doorway. “Anyone with steady hands and a willingness to follow directions without talking too much… you’re invited too! But you gotta be fast!”

With that, he was gone. At that announcement, at least seven others pulled away from the table, eagerly following after him. The space they left behind was quickly filled. 

Meanwhile, Eddie was rubbing his temples. Peter slowly slid off the table, wondering what Ned was up to.

There was some grumbling that wasn’t quite audible. Its origin became apparent when Eddie looked down at his own sternum. “Hey. I was fine being a drifter, pal. You’re the one with a crush on Captain America.”

There was a long, wet sound, like something with a massive tongue just blew the world’s grossest raspberry. 

“Who doesn’t?” MJ said idly. “Venom, I’ve seen him up close and personal, and the pictures do not do that man justice.” There was a chorus of muttered agreements about that.

Morale was high.

Eddie’s face twisted. “Can we not talk about that?”

“What?” MJ said flatly. “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to someone with actual taste.”

An off-putting and deep-throated cackle echoed somewhere under the table. Peter’s hair stood on end. Despite himself, he peeked under the table for reassurance. There was nothing there. When he looked above it again at Eddie, Eddie looked away immediately, visibly embarrassed.

What weird people they were allying themselves with.

-

  
  


With five minutes to spare, they were still arguing about how to get Betty past the Life Foundation. The room was mostly emptied out now with everyone else assigned to tasks ranging from watching out for the Guard to helping Ned build whatever invention he’d come up with now. Nearly everything was in place. 

Bystanders and the injured would remain in the auditorium. Every entrance or exit—no matter how unlikely—was covered by the school’s normal defenses (like the metal coverings over the windows) or other obstacles they could come up with on the fly. Even Peter would have a hard time trying to scale the buildings now. Who knew ESU had deployable spikes?

The other side of the building was sealed shut and reinforced. Without wings or other sources of flight, the only way to approach them as a unit was through the bottom of the quad. The agents would have to cross it fully to reach the auditorium—and it was the quad where everyone else would be making their stand.

At the deadline, Wanda would contract the barrier even further, only covering that building. At a distance, it would look like a surrender. In reality, the even smaller barrier would allow Wanda more precise control, perhaps even enough to stop another Beck from coming through. 

As stretched thin as they were, they could hold the line with their plan.

Which is why it was so frustrating to bash heads with McCoy now. Getting Betty out was pivotal to their survival, and her successful escape was the only thing that was going to make their defenses worth it. 

And yet, McCoy hesitated. “And you’re sure you’re willing to go through this again?” he was asking Betty, his forehead wrinkled in a grimace.

“I must. Everything that Beck did, he did because of them,” Betty said urgently. “He was one of their agents. He’d been paid off by them for years. He knew how they operated!” Betty stretched out her arms. Blue and white lights flickered around them. “He told me everything when he was following me in the security cameras, and I grabbed every recording I could on the way out. I’m practically a walking confession. Just get me out in front of someone who will give a damn about it!”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Eddie said lightly. Of the six people left in the room, he was the only one who stood apart. Everyone else was standing in a circle. “The Life Foundation has a stranglehold on the media, the Central Hero Agency is covering for them, and all Pro Heroes in the city are toeing the line. Finding one person in New York willing to risk it might be actually… impossible.”

The mood in the room tanked. Several independent conversations rose up all at once, full of suggestions of people who might fit that bill. Matt Murdock’s name came up a few times. So did mentions of Carol Danvers and Steven Strange, two notoriously detached Pro Heroes. But there was no guarantee either of them was in the right city, solar system, or dimension to lend a hand. If they were so inclined. Or could even be reached. 

Firmly benched Johnny Storm (who apparently had more broken bones in his body that Peter would have guessed) made a spirited argument that the Four would mobilize if he just asked. Despite his injuries, he seemed willing to fly out to demand it of them. It was only the threat of being shot down from the sky that kept his heels on the ground, sizzling slightly.

“The fact of the matter is,” McCoy said slowly, regretfully, “is that the Pro Heroes in this city are extremely aware of the abuses of the Guard. And yet all of them have chosen caution and silence. We too chose caution and silence. We know better now, but, for others, we do not know how deeply the roots of that caution have sunk.” 

While he said this, McCoy looked at Betty apologetically. He didn’t need to say what would happen if they chose incorrectly, steering her to someone who toed the line more fiercely than others. It would be awful if they went through all the trouble of getting her out only for some person to immediately turn her into the Central Hero Agency. The evidence would disappear.

Betty would too. 

“At least Mr. Rogers was willing to push for answers,” Betty muttered mutinously.

“An Avenger would,” McCoy said knowingly. “They’ve always been prone to bending the rules…”

And they definitely needed a rule breaker. Somebody willing to break a lot of rules. Even the big ones.

Wait. 

Peter knew exactly who they should send her to. “Wait,” he said excitedly. “I got a guy in the Avengers. He owes me one.” He turned to Betty. “If you say I sent you, he’ll listen. He’ll know what to do with the data too. He might even bring in the calvary for the rest of us!” 

“I’ll do it!” Betty crowed, immediately trusting him.

“Hold up,” MJ said apologetically, her face pinched. “So, say we slip Betty past the Life Foundation—which is already a huge ask—how is she getting to your contact? The Avengers Tower is on the other side of Manhattan.”

Betty turned to her. “A car first?” She pulled out her bricked cell then. “Then I could ride a phone call or text message once we’re out of the range of the emergency broadcast signal.” She looked at her phone. “Oh, I used to get caught in those signals all the time. I bet I could do it on purpose…”

McCoy rubbed his chin. He was seriously considering this. “Do you have his phone number?” This, he directed at Peter.

“No,” Peter admitted, thinking of the phone he frequently left in his dorm—the same dorm room that was now under six feet of rubble. “But you do. Assuming you call adjunct professors personally…?”

It dawned on McCoy who Peter’s contact was. “Stark. Of course.” 

“Then give me your cell phone!” Betty proposed, turning to McCoy. “I’ll carry it until it works again, then I’ll give him a call! If you trust me, I mean…”

“It’s not trust that’s a problem.” McCoy’s face fell as he reached for his pocket. “Even if I gave it to you, Ms. Brant, it would not be helpful in this specific instance,” he said regretfully. “I’ve only ever called Stark from my office line. But perhaps there’s someone else we could call! One of my contacts, specifically? Some of them are, hm. Overseas? In different states? That would be problematic, wouldn’t it? And who knows where Logan is these days…”

“It has to be Mr. Stark,” Peter said firmly. “We’re running out time, and we need someone close.” And they needed someone who would actually do something about this.

Stark had promised him. No strings attached. Any condition. All Peter needed to do was give him a call.

But McCoy was shaking his head. “Then I don’t know how we can make this happen,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest, deep in thought. “Perhaps if Ms. Brant stopped by my office first to pick up his phone number? However, my office is not protected. She will be at risk. And she will be at risk again when she attempts to pass the agents undetected.” 

McCoy hummed to himself, thinking. They were so close to figuring something out. Peter was frustrated and stumped—and time wouldn’t stop ticking. Any other variations he could think of involved different people leaving, either with her or by themselves. And they were all terribly flawed in the same way the current plan fell short.

But McCoy lit now, eyebrows lifting. “Or maybe she only needs one stop after all,” he said, growing more excited. “Please, indulge me for a moment. Could someone remind me how the emergency broadcast signal came about?”

Something crackled and exploded somewhere outside. 

“Oh my god, Doc,” Johnny said, exasperated. “We do not have the time for a pop quiz.”

A moment later, someone called out that it was a false alarm. It didn’t help.

Eddie, to their surprise, jumped in, sparing them. “About seven years ago, hundreds of thousands of people—villains and civilians alike—were charged with doing stupid shit with their phones in disaster zones,” he said in a bored tone, pacing. “Clout chasers and opportunists, mostly. The first ten or so iterations of the law were struck down as civil rights violations. Rightfully so. Civilians are, after all, allowed to document Pro Hero work as long as they don’t interfere in the work itself.” 

Eddie came to the end of one of his loops, then spun around, a finger up in the air. “The current version of the law is much softer than the original. It claims that the signal is meant to be a resource for public safety. The scope is a lot narrower, and multiple levels of permissions are required to even fire it off. It also specifically targets smart phones, leaving a huge loophole for most cheapass burner phones, your grandad’s Nokia, and-” 

Eddie paused. He crossed his arms over his chest, squinting at MJ. “Why are you surprised? I cover controversial shit, you know.”

“Any source of competence from you is a marvel to me,” MJ replied testily.

Eddie clapped a hand over his chest. “That hurts my feelings.”

“Loopholes. Any non-smart phone, you say?” McCoy pressed. “What about a satellite phone?” 

“Who the fuck uses a satellite phone anymore?” Eddie said. At McCoy’s expression, he shrugged. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Got one in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“You are, by far, the worst person I have ever worked with,” McCoy opined gracefully. “More importantly… Ms. Brant.” 

McCoy turned to her abruptly. He bent slightly at the waist. A moment later, he started grinning. It was an expression that would have been terrifying on any face other than his own. 

“I do believe we’ve found your ticket out of here.”


	17. Chapter 17

Peter had always wondered why Dr. McCoy’s office had a heavy wooden door with a metal core. It seemed unnecessary. Over the last few years, he’d watched quite a few of his fellow students struggle with opening it, some so badly that McCoy himself felt compelled to spring out of his chair and help them, apologizing the entire way.

Watching it rattle and shake under the destructive force of the Life Foundation’s Support squad, Peter now knew why. Even so, it wasn’t enough, barely holding the agents back. To his left, another bullet split and shattered against McCoy’s reinforced windows. At this point, Peter had more faith in the windows than the door.

If they got through the door, Peter was going to be their last line of defense—and what a poor defense he would be. One battered vigilante against a hoard of well-rested so-called agents of the Life Foundation… He stood at attention anyways, ready to web the hell out of the first thing that battered its way into McCoy’s office. His hips throbbed with his heartbeat. His mouth tasted of copper. And he felt far more woozy standing still right here, right now, than he had in the race from Wanda’s protective bubble to the far more dangerous office buildings that housed the school president’s set of rooms.

He couldn’t fail. It wasn’t allowed.

As scheduled, Wanda had pulled her barrier at the deadline, yanking it all the way back to the auditorium. Ten minutes later, countless Life Foundation agents were seen walking up the quad like an invading force. One of their scouts—a young man with traveling eyeballs for a Quirk—had returned just as the agents had crested the hill, reporting that there were less than fifty agents on the ground. The Guard’s shadow was felt all over the steady trek forward, but they themselves had yet to appear.

It didn’t matter. The Support agents were dangerous enough. So, once the Guard’s Support personnel had reached a certain part of the quad, the planted trap had finally sprung.

Twenty-foot ice walls had appeared out of the ground, following the paths of water etched by one of their civilians in the ground. The walls shot up without mercy, knocking agents onto the ground and throwing whole squads into chaos as they were separated. The walls formed a brutal maze with long routes and twisting turns, not just isolating their enemies, but confusing and disorientating them as well.

Their first line of defense—teachers, students, and even some civilians—gathered at the base of the walls, ready to battle anyone who came out.

But not Bobby. The maze was probably the last feat Bobby Drake would be able to perform for them today. With his efforts, he had bought them precious time.

And they had needed that time. MJ, Betty, and Peter had used the chaos as cover to sprint to the office buildings while the agents were occupied. But not all agents were equally occupied. Some, blessed with fortunate Quirks, had made their way out of the maze faster than others—and all agents, it seemed, recognized Betty’s face.

At the sight of her, the newly free agents had tried to intercept them, only to be intercepted by McCoy himself, who many forgot was quite literally a beast of a man.

That had taken some of the heat off of them while they raced to McCoy’s office, but not all. Hence the people trying to break into the office right now. 

Peter licked his lips fitfully. To his right, MJ was on her knees. She yanked up the floorboards so fast, her fingers bled. She sucked on them absently, laying down on her stomach as she reached around in the cavity below McCoy’s office with her other arm.

On the other side of the office, Betty paced, rubbing her hands together fitfully. “I’m going to be sick,” she said mournfully. She was finally starting to sober up a little. She still hadn’t quite gotten all of the blood out of her hair.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” MJ said breathlessly. Then she let out a triumphant noise, yanking a briefcase out of the floor.

MJ dropped it down, flipping open the buckles hastily. An aged note floated downwards. “ _Just in case. X,_ ” she read before putting it aside. Impatiently, she pulled the velvet protective sheet off of the interior. Then she paused, a yellow glow lighting up her face.

McCoy had warned them that the phone was embedded in the case and powered by four crystalline power sources—a by-product of someone’s Quirk back in the day. It still was. Not a single crystal was dark, damaged, or clouded. And when MJ unhooked the clunky receiver, the whole thing turned on like it was plugged into a wall, just as McCoy promised. 

And that was where fascinating revelations of the case ended. The satellite receiver itself was an ancient looking relic, almost bigger than Betty’s face with a flip open cover and a thick, extendable antenna.

MJ leaned back on her heels, waving a hand in front of her face with a cough. While the receiver itself was pristine, dust clouds were floating up from both the case and the hollow space under the floor. “Wow. He really wasn’t kidding about not touching this for a decade, huh.” She tugged lightly on the thick cord going from the briefcase back into the hole in the ground. According to McCoy, the wiring went through the floor, up the wall, and then out of the roof to where it was connected to an antenna pointed at a satellite in the sky.

It seemed so finicky. No wonder McCoy relied religiously on his landline.

The attention of all three of them was jerked forcefully to the door when they heard a crack—a scary one that seemed to foreshadow an imminent attack.

“Second time’s the charm?” Betty said breezily, pulling a sheet from the rolodex McCoy had on his desk. She dropped to her knees. Looking at it and the phone, Betty quickly punched in the numbers of Stark’s phone.

Peter rounded the desk to get close. “Remember, the guy you’re gonna get is not Stark. It’s JARVIS. He’s an AI. You need to convince him to listen to you. Show him everything if you need to. Tell him-”

“Iron Man owes Spider-Man a freebie,” she recited, lifting the phone to her ear. “I got it. I won’t screw up this time.”

“Hey,” MJ said. “You didn’t screw up the first time either.”

Betty smiled at her for that—then up at Peter. Her expression was pained. “Thanks,” she said warmly. “The both of you. And tell Ned.” She started to glow with the intensity of her Quirk. “See you on the flipside.”

Betty dematerialized. MJ caught the receiver before it could hit the floor. She stared at it, her expression almost petrified.

_Ring._

“What if-”

_Ring._

“Don’t,” Peter ordered. There were too many scenarios to worry about. Did Tony even answer this phone, or did he send every number he didn’t know to voicemail? Would Betty know how to get out of voicemail?

_Ring._

What if JARVIS looked at her, this human-shaped manifestation of data, and thought she was a threat? What if he tried to delete her? Could she be deleted?

_Ring._

And what if the call suddenly cut out before Betty hit the satellite? Or, what if, after ten years of being ignored, the antenna on the roof was no longer positioned at the right angle in the sky? Would she continue on into space? At what point would a signal fade? At what point would _she_ fade?

_Ring._

This suddenly seemed like a horrible idea. But Betty could not stay. The bottom of the door was starting to cave inward through the blunt force of their unwanted guests. The voices were getting louder.

_Ring._

Hinges starting to separate from the door. MJ stood up unsteadily, joining him.

_Ring._

Dancing beams from flashlights were creating monstrous shadows under the door. Peter had to believe this would work.

_Ring._

Then…

There was nothing. Only silence.

_Ring._

Not complete silence. MJ and Peter flinched badly at the sound of the continuing call, even scowling down at it. Dragging his attention back to the door, Peter crept a little closer. The continual bangs and use of force against McCoy’s (now sad looking) door had ceased.

All he could hear was MJ’s shallow breaths, his own heartbeat, and the muffled ringing of the ongoing call. The back of his neck was damp with sweat. The longer the silence went on, the more he perspired. Then MJ approached, and they both stared at the door, working up the nerve to check.

In a few years, perhaps, they might laugh about the way they both flinched a moment later when someone knocked on the door. As it was, it nearly gave Peter a heart attack. When they stood there, frozen, neither approaching it, the knocker knocked again, this time in a rhythmic pattern.

This time, Peter screwed up his courage and ripped open the door, only to come face to face with a heavily breathing Pietro. He had a foot on the back of a crumpled Life Foundation agent, like a conqueror, but he looked anything but. His hair was a mess and his nose had been split open at the bridge. It had dried crustily, messily. 

“Is it done?” he asked, a touch impatient.

“The call is active,” MJ said, her voice tense.

Pietro walked past Peter, peering at the case with interest. “And it works?”

“Looks like it,” Peter said, rubbing his arms. All of the adrenaline was bleeding out of him. He wanted to crawl under McCoy’s large desk and take a very well-deserved nap.

“Then maybe I should-” Pietro said, starting to bend over.

MJ stopped him with her hand, her eyes glazing with a hint of white. Pietro immediately backed up, wary of her Quirk killing powers.

It was probably best no one touched it just yet anyway. The phone was still ringing. Thinking this was MJ’s angle, Peter was blindsided by what she said next.

“How do we know it’s you?” she demanded.

Pietro squinted at her. “…we didn’t have time to set up code words,” he said carefully. “Besides, Beck ran like the coward he was to avoid the wrath of my sister. You really think he’d dare to come back on campus?”

“My friend’s life is on the line. If I hand over the phone to Beck, and he hangs up, I have no idea what will happen to her.” MJ tipped her chin low, her eyes whitening further. Her voice deepened. “So how do we know it’s you?”

This challenge didn’t make Pietro back up. If anything, he only grew more intense. “Hey, same,” Pietro bit back. “How do I know you’re the real deal yourself?”

The phone was still ringing. Why was this taking so long? Was this an effect of Betty’s Quirk? Was it the natural consequence of an AI screening phone calls? Or did satellite phones really take an eternity to connect? Peter couldn’t begin to answer any of those questions, which made him feel both unsettled and twitchy.

“This is stupid,” Peter interjected, getting between the two of them. Neither of them were pinging his danger sense. There was no reason to have this conversation. “We don’t have enough time for friendly fire, guys!”

He was ignored.

“You lived in Sokovia until its collapse about a decade ago,” MJ offered.

Pietro bared his bloodied teeth at her. “Congratulations. You’ve read my wiki page.”

MJ didn’t blink. “You lived with your family, but you spend more of your time with your sister than anyone else. 24/7, she said. You even shared a bunk bed until you were both 14.” Pietro’s eyebrows furrowed deeply at this piece of information. “Once, when you were seven-”

Pietro’s eyes bulged. He immediately threw up his hands. “Stop right there. Let a guy have some dignity. Geez.” Heaving a sigh, he turned around, folding his arms behind his head. He got about five feet away before stopping, pausing, then spinning to face them again. He looked way too smug. “Okay. My turn.”

“Let’s hear it,” MJ retorted grimly.

Pietro pointed, but not at MJ. Peter’s hackles raised. Pietro looked far too smug, and there was a wide and vile smirk on his face. With a sense of deep resignation, Peter knew what he was about to say seconds before his immature teacher started shaping the first syllable of Peter’s vigilante persona.

“Spider-Man’s real name,” Pietro revealed, “is Peter. Benjamin. _Parker_.”

This revelation hung in the air like the striking of a bell in complete silence. Pietro kept switching his gaze from MJ to Peter to MJ again, his expression approaching gleeful. Peter observed this, as if from a distance, recognizing that, under different circumstances, this whole conversation would be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

But in the context of everything else that had happened in the last hour, day, week, and school term… it didn’t make a dent.

Eventually, Peter looked over at MJ. To her credit, her expression was stony and unreadable. Sensing his eyes, she looked back at him, a faint question in her gaze. _How are we going to approach this,_ she seemed to ask.

Peter just shrugged. “…If Pietro could figure it out, so could Beck,” he offered tiredly. If they were really trying to prove identities here, this wasn’t enough to clear Pietro.

Pietro nearly collapsed into himself, he was so outraged. “ _Are you kidding me?_ ” he screeched. His Quirk flashed and he was at the window, arm braced against it like an unknowing widow looking for her husband’s return from war. “This can’t be happening. What have I done to deserve this?” Another flash, and Pietro was across the room, kicking at a piece of wood MJ had pried off the floor. “Come on, that doesn’t clear me? You’ve got to be joking.” Another flash, and Pietro was sitting on McCoy’s chair. “I've been sitting on this information for years.” He leaned forward, smashing his fists against the desk. “And now you’re telling me it’s not good enough?” His voice went up an octave. “You’re telling me I _wasted_ it?”

His Quirk flashed again, and Peter didn’t bother to see where it took him. Peter didn’t need a reminder that Pietro—and, by extension, Wanda—weren’t more than a handful of years older than them. But, boy, what a reminder.

Somewhere to the left of him, Pietro continued to rant, swinging between disappointment, indignation, and melancholy. “-you don’t know what it’s like to grow up with someone like Wanda.” He was ranting now. “Or what it’s like to finally have a juicy bit of information to sit on that _she doesn’t already know about_ -”

“This tantrum definitely _sounds_ like him,” Peter suggested to MJ in an undertone. In the background, Pietro’s whining continued.

“Yup,” MJ agreed, warm color returning to her eyes. “I’m regretting everything about this. In hindsight, I should have just asked him to show off his Quirk. You know. In a way Beck couldn’t copy?”

“Maybe retrieving an item in a place only you knew about?” Peter suggested. It was good to think about these kinds of things in advance.

“Oh, that would have been a good idea.”

In the time the two of them had this little aside, Pietro had sped to four more locations in the office, caught up in his monologue of misery. So when he stopped in front of them—stopped talking and stopped zipping around too—they noticed. 

Pietro’s eyes dropped to their feet. “Why is the phone no longer ringing?”

All of the levity provoked by Pietro’s antics died and crashed to the floor—because he was right. It was no longer ringing. MJ and Peter stared at him. Then MJ lunged for the receiver, lifting it to her cheek.

“Hello! Mr. Stark? Hello!”

MJ waited for a moment, then looked up at the two of them. She shook her head before tentatively putting the receiver on the cradle, finally hanging it up. She settled back slightly, letting out a wobbly breath.

“Did she make it?” Pietro asked urgently.

“…I don’t know,” MJ replied sadly. “I couldn’t tell. It sounded like the call was over.” Fresh dread twisted Peter’s gut.

And, on the heels of this, something crashed at a distance. Shouting followed. Pietro turned his head towards it, then crouched down to unplug the antenna wire.

“Wait,” MJ said. “If you want to take it somewhere, we need the-”

Dropping the wire, Pietro vanished. The wire instantly whipped back through the hole, then Pietro was back, a clunky antenna balanced on his shoulder. He’d picked up both drywall and garden variety dust along the way.

“-antenna,” MJ continued, annoyed now. “On the roof.”

The rest of MJ’s warning ended in a sigh. No one could keep up with Quicksilver.

“I’ll bring this to the auditorium,” Pietro said, brisk and business-like. He crouched again, closing up the box. “Maybe one of our civilians can make it work. Maybe we can make more calls for help. Whatever the case, it’s not safe here.” He stood, looking like a teacher again instead of a peer. “And _you’re_ not safe here. You need to head back to the auditorium too.” His eyes flicked over to Peter. “Especially you, Parker.”

A low explosion met their ears, closer than before. Something deep in the ground seemed to crackle and pop.

Pietro looked grim. “Head back. Now.” With that order given, Pietro vanished, phone in tow.

-

Using the struggles of others to slip past detection had to be, Peter thought, the worst thing he’d ever done. The only silver lining of this was that their defense was working pretty good, all things considered. He didn’t know what he’d do if he saw someone actually failing, falling, and dying at the attempt. He’d probably get himself killed too, he recognized wryly.

The school’s last defense relied heavily on divide and conquer, whether it be by Quirk, trap, or misdirection. Bobby’s maze stayed sky high, keeping at least two-thirds of the agents occupied. Others on the ground forced agents into chases, driving them into traps or even into some of the unguarded buildings, using the unfamiliar layouts to their benefit.

The defense force was grouped into squads, and every member of said squad was utilized to the fullest extent. Support Track. Hero Track. Civilian. Teacher. It didn’t matter. They went for their strengths and deployed them without mercy.

And did Peter just see an agent slip and fall over some thrown marbles? Yes. But so what if some of the traps approached Macaulay Culkin levels of shenanigans? It was working. There were more threats trussed up or otherwise restrained than Peter could have ever dreamed possible. They might actually have a shot at this.

Pausing after punching a dazed man in the face, Doreen whooped loudly when Venom raced by on all fours. He was chasing terrorized Life Foundation agents back into the maze. Further up the quad, fireballs rained down from the roof. Targeted at the few agents who had taken flight, they were tossed by a supposably benched Johnny Storm. He had excellent aim and plenty of rage built up to power his Quirk. For those he missed, a group of Support Track students had wrangled up a rough catapult, and they were filling it with everything from paint cans to rocks to a spunky member of their janitorial staff with a club and a gliding Quirk he was just itching to use.

Right at the foot of the protected building, Kitty phased through a line of agents, turning around to spin grenade rings at them cheekily. The panicking agents tried to disarm themselves, but they weren’t quite fast enough to escape the chaos that was 20 or more smoke, flash, and tear gas grenades detnotating all at once. Twenty feet from her, Pietro zipped through a crowd of regrouped agents, copying what Kitty did—but with more brutal results.

The sides of the quad were just as active. A constantly churning pack of dirt revealed that more than a few agents had fallen into a civilian’s quicksand Quirk. Just beyond that--and marching in from the parking lot—that freshman with a strength Quirk threw Beck’s expensive BMW at a massive agent menacing his fellow classmates. The kid had clearly found his spine.

On the opposite side of the quad, a senior—one of Peter’s Support Track classmates—appeared suddenly behind an agent snarling orders into a walkie-talkie. When he whipped around on her, she merely smiled and released her power, revealing a gang of civilians armed with a variety of Quirks and blunt objects surrounding him. Military-trained or not, the agent was immediately outnumbered and overwhelmed.

It really did look like they were winning.

Better yet, the full Guard itself had yet to appear. Carnage was someplace unknown, likely lurking, but Riot was nowhere to be seen. Harry himself was battling McCoy in the middle of the quad, swiping at him left and right. But Beast seemed to have the upper hand. Wincing, Peter watched McCoy grab Harry by the head and slam him into the ground. But a struggling Harry didn’t submit. He probably wasn’t even allowed to.

The only other Guard Peter saw was Flash. Stripped free of his exoskeleton, Flash was in the fetal position with Ned standing over him. The juxtaposition of that duo made Peter—and many others—do a double take. After the revelation of the Guard’s weakness, Peter half-expected Ned to reinvent a flamethrower. While there were definitely active flamethrowers in the quad, what Ned did instead was nuts.

Ned was wearing a massive backpack full of tech. Many mismatched speakers were mounted on a shoulder rest, framing his entire body, and Peter could hear the noise from even here. It was not only loud but also incredibly piercing.

There seemed to be some rhyme or reason to the angles of the stereo also, which Ned was trying to work out with a helper. When he moved too far to the left, a shivering Flash crawled with him, trying to stay within the sweet spot in the middle where he didn’t seem to feel as much pain.

His Quirk was nowhere in sight. Flash wasn’t lashing out. Flash wasn’t fleeing. Flash wasn’t even going at Ned. He was just kneeling there, hands clamped over his ears and his teeth tightly gritted. Was he even hearing the Hivemind at this point? Peter hoped not.

But, in any case, if he was reading the scene correctly, Ned hadn’t just created an anti-Guard weapon. He’d created an anti-Guard _prison_.

Peter didn’t get much more time than this to watch the activity on the quad. MJ kept pulling him back towards the auditorium, and, within a few minutes, they’d stealthily entered the building again through one of the side entrances.

About to argue that they should go outside too and join their peers, Peter was unprepared for his knee giving out on him. He staggered forward, catching the sharp edge of the wall against his chest. He grunted, feeling MJ lift his arm up high enough to wrap around her shoulder.

He was so useless.

She carried them both to the outside of the auditorium. It was a slow trek, but they made it there eventually, reaching the end of the long hallway. A classmate of theirs burst from the auditorium, crossing the hallways to the exterior door. Seeing MJ out of the corner of his eyes, he shouted, “MJ, are you coming?” He was out the door a second later, not waiting for a response.

“Here’s our stop,” MJ said lightly, untangling his arm from around her. “Hope you enjoyed your Uber.”

She wasn’t going to follow him into the auditorium after all. Scared, Peter grabbed her wrist. “Don’t,” he blurted out.

“Don’t what?” MJ challenged gently. She twisted her arm out of his grip. “Peter, I’ve trained for this moment, same as you have. It’s my duty and my responsibility to join them out there.”

“You were going to _quit_ ,” he accused her, face heating up.

MJ smiled faintly, the expression wry. “So were you.” She looked him up and down. “I don’t think that worked out so well for you…”

He could tell that she was trying to tease him about Spider-Man, but the joke wasn’t quite landing. He was too fixated on what this meant. “Then me too. Let's go out there. Together.”

“No. Not you too,” MJ said, frowning. She looked him up and down again, though this time was slower, lingering on all the ways Carnage had damaged him. “You’ve done… more than enough.” Her voice was thick now, her eyes shining.

She smiled a moment later, knocking his knuckles against his good shoulder. “If you _have_ to keep an eye on things, join Johnny on the roof?”

It was a compromise. A horrible one. Peter’s eyes flickered to the door, the violence he could still hear outside. “I guess,” he said, a poor sport. “How much did you bribe Johnny to sit on me, anyway?”

MJ snorted. She stepped in, squeezing him in a brief hug. “You’ll never know,” she said in a sing-song voice before backing up. Awkwardly, she waved. “Be safe.” Giving him one last look, she headed out of the exterior door.

-

Defeated, Peter stopped and stared at the auditorium door. Red and black light flickered through the wall, promising protection and healing. He flexed a hand over his chest where his wounds continued to throb and complain. He looked at the exterior door twenty feet down the hall where he’d last seen MJ. He knew where she wanted him to be. Where Ned wanted him to be. Where most of the people he’d talked to today wanted him to be, actually.

But he couldn’t lay down while others were fighting. The best he could give her—or any of them, really—was the compromise MJ had offered him. After all, if things really went south, Peter could drop down into the quad instantly… as long as a certain hothead wasn’t actually sitting on him, that is.

So, Peter turned and headed for the stairs. It took four flights, but Peter got to the roof eventually. Resigned to deal with Johnny, Peter stepped out of the stair access, calling out a greeting. He considered and discarded a couple of bribes he could offer to get his classmate to back off.

But the planning was pointless; Johnny had left. Peter did a full circle of the roof, just to make sure, but, no. Peter was all alone. He was off the hook.

Pleased at this unexpected boon, Peter headed to the edge of the roof facing the fight, bracing against the small wall there.

Down in the quad, about a fourth of Bobby’s ice walls had fallen under the explosive force of some agent’s Quirk. While visually distressing, the battle was still somewhat balanced. Ned’s slapped together inventions were working. Sometime in the last ten minutes, he’d figured out how to set them up without a person carrying them. Now, there were two precisely angled sound prisons active. Flash and Harry were the subjects, though a worn-out Harry didn’t go as far as dropping into a fetal position like Flash. They’d repositioned the tech against a wall and left it there. Neither Flash nor Harry seemed willing to move.

Peter saw a flash of MJ’s hair near a leaning tree. Her head was bent close to Ned’s. It looked like they were trying to fix a third sound prison for yet another one of their unwelcome guests. Their side of the quad was mostly free of agents. They were as safe as they could be in an active battle.

Most of the defense squads were now focused around the crumbling maze. Pietro rejoined the crowd in a blur, charging up the side of the ice wall. In just as many milliseconds, he sped through and knocked down seven Life Foundation agents who’d had the wherewithal to escape the maze vertically with their tools or weapons. At the end of his run, he skidded slightly on the ice, slipping and falling on his ass. He got up quickly, narrowly avoiding both a nasty fall to the ground as well as a storm of bullets. 

Meanwhile, the other students from Support Track realized flamethrowers worked just as well against humans as they did the Guard. They joined Venom in warding off the Life Foundation from emerging from the ice maze.

Carnage himself had finally appeared sometime within the last few minutes, and he was being chased by three different defense squads. Normally, the sight of someone running from the good guys was a sign that the tide of the situation had turned. Peter should be relieved, he thought. But Carnage wouldn’t stop laughing. The sound of it echoing through the campus gave Peter chills.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the long absent Riot finally entered the scene. He emerged from the ice maze alone, his left arm already transforming into a massive weapon. Changing tactics, Venom reversed course and went straight after him, dodging just in time to avoid getting decapitated. He kept running, throwing his whole weight against the similarly sized Guard. They both went flying, smacking against the side of the science building with a force heard all across campus.

The ensuing fight was both acrobatic and impossible; their Quirks were really something else. Fortunately, Venom was successfully keeping Riot distracted as they bounced between building to building, tearing up the structures and defenses with the ferocity of their fight. Riot fought to bleed, to maim. Brock, having zero combat experience, fought to survive. He was somehow succeeding, if only by maintaining a stalemate. 

The others decided—perhaps wisely—not to interfere in the fight between the two titans, focusing on the rest of the agents instead.

Were they winning? Who knew? The fight went on.

A handful of teachers. A scattering of students yet to leave on break. Rogue civilians here and there. They hadn’t had a chance in hell of actually winning just an hour ago. Only a small hope that one young woman could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Guard was what they needed guarding from. Only then would they survive this. Only then would this attempt to endure be worth it.

Watching the quad now, though, Peter felt a shimmer of hope. Half of the Guard had been contained. Few, if any, of the still bodies on the quad belonged to someone from ESU’s side, and below him, a handful of agents were actually running _from_ his allies. Not to. Despite their early losses and early wounds, teachers, students, and civilians alike, they were turning the tide. They were pushing back.

They might actually _win_ this.

His contrary body sagged further at the thought of victory. He’d been hunted by an agent from the Agency for three days once, and the fatigue he felt now was so much worse than the self-deprivation and exhaustion from those early days. Adrenaline was a crutch made of ice—great while it lasted but prone to knock him on his ass when he least expected it.

Still, he remained. Held up by only hope, the wall in front of him, and the crisp night wind, Peter let himself imagine a version of this day where they could all go home. Where none of his friends were harmed. Where the bad guys were brought to justice—and not propped up by it.

Then a gravelly voice rose from behind him, dragging him right back down to reality.

“You’re a very hard person to find, Spider-Man.”

Peter’s stomach dropped down to his feet.

-

In a cold sweat, Peter turned around slowly.

Deadpool walked out of the shadows of the roof access stairway. He was a patchwork mannikin of a man, pieces of him literally fastened and mashed together by yards of duct tape, and, bizarrely, the bottom half of a pink tutu. Despite the burst of unexpected color, Wade’s white eyes were thin. Tight, Unfriendly.

Peter pulled away from the wall, swallowing.

“Oh, cat got your tongue?” Deadpool asked in faux concern. “You’re so much braver over the phone.” Peter grimly maintained the gap between them. Seeing this, Wade laughed meanly. “All the silent treatment from before… you know, I assumed it was an advanced callback to that one issue. You know the one! You had laryngitis or something? And boy, did your silence spook all your usual customers.”

Wade laughed again, the noise devoid of any real joy. Then he shrugged, shaking his finger at Peter. “Very obscure reference, but I admire your commitment to the bit. After all, why else would a notoriously mouthy little vigilante like you _suddenly zip your lips_?”

Deadpool was walking towards him, and it was the very last thing Peter wanted. He backed up, matching Wade’s steps, hating that this was where his tangled thread of his lies had led him. Wade had been kind to Betty. Wade had looked out for the innocents of ESU by changing sides. But none of that meant that Wade didn’t still have a beef with Spider-Man.

“But, as it turned out, it was just me,” Deadpool said, voice deepening. “No fourth wall breakage there. I’m just the only one who gets the silent treatment around here. That shit hurts, you know?”

Was he serious? Had Peter actually _hurt_ Wade’s feelings with his silence? Sure, he never talked to Wade while his mask was on, but it wasn’t personal. It was just because Wade was scarily perceptive. In the past, Wade had divined his thoughts off of, what? The angle of his shoulders? He’d predicted his moods. Guessed at his motivations. Intervened when Peter was about to throw down. Hell, he even picked Peter’s face out of a crowd through the corner of his eye while distracted by a mission—and that was before he even _knew_ Peter, really.

Of course Peter wasn’t going to give Wade the ammunition of his voice. Wade would figure him out instantly.

Peter kept backing up until he had nowhere else to go. His back thudded against one of the school’s chimneys. He regretted the choices that had led him to this moment. When had he convinced his boyfriend that Spider-Man was his number one enemy? That one phone call couldn’t have been it. Ned’s bravado on behalf of Spider-Man had been seventy percent hot air and zero percent personal digs. And it couldn’t be all the interference Peter had run between him and Eddie Brock. In fact, Wade almost seemed to appreciate it at times.

Wade wasn’t usually so bitter with Spider-Man either. At worst, Deadpool was an irritating obstacle that liked Spider-Man more than Spider-Man liked him. There were multiple encounters where Wade ran away while also praising Peter’s technique. There was even that one time Wade had thrown glitter over Peter’s head, allegedly celebrating Spideypool’s Three Week Anniversary—fanfare that Peter Parker, as Wade’s boyfriend, certainly had yet to receive. Not that he was jealous or anything.

But none of that glee or energy was present here. Instead, Wade was… angry. Peter had never had Wade angry at him before. It made him feel about three inches tall. It made him want to apologize—but for what?

“I should have known, though, right?” Wade continued bitterly. “I really screwed the pooch on this one. All the signs were there. The late nights. The missed connections. The _physique_ , oh boy.” Distracted, Wade made cupping gestures with his hands, then dropped it when he seemed to remember where he was. “But it’s the voice, you know! The thing that finally gave you away.”

Peter cocked his head, confused, because, uh, _no, it didn’t._

Wade paused. Then, fingers dragging lightly across Peter’s torn mask, he dropped a metaphorical bomb on his lap. “You forget, sweetheart. _I’ve met Ned._ ”

Stunned, Peter vibrated in place. He’d had half of a thought earlier to take off his mask, convinced that would change the course of this conversation—and their relationship—for good. But now that Wade had metaphorically done it for him, Peter couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t process it. Couldn’t even _begin_ to accept it.

Because who the hell else would Wade Wilson call sweetheart in this context?

No one, that’s who.

Panicking, Peter flung himself off the side of the roof. He landed unsteadily on a lower roof, feet slipping. Cursing, Wade followed him, landing hard. Peter bolted for the end of the roof, planning to dive off that too, only to be rugby tackled around the waist too far from the finish line.

They rolled, and they rolled, and they rolled again. Everything hurt anew. Wade’s arms latched around his torso tightly, and then his legs too. But Peter stood anyways, resisting all attempts to keep him still, and it was only when he was fully standing that he realized how unbelievably _stupid_ this was.

Especially when Wade was clinging to him like a menace or like one half of the couple in those koala challenge videos. Especially when Wade’s every limb was positioned not for effectiveness, but to avoid the areas of the heaviest bandaging. Especially when there was absolutely no way to run away from this conversation unless he planned on dying today. And he _never_ planned on that.

“Wade. What are you doing?”

“Uh. My best?” Wade lifted his face from where it was buried in Peter’s ribs. “Rude.”

“No, I mean.” Fed up, Peter gestured at himself and the way he was being clung on to.

“Oh,” Wade said brightly. “Can’t you tell? I’m LARPing as a human straitjacket. I take feedback.”

“There are… better ways to restrain someone,” Peter said slowly. This wasn’t very effective. It was confusing. Wade was confusing. Sure, Peter had bolted, but _why was he doing this?_

“I know. I invented a lot of them. I was just hoping you’d stop resisting at some point and _start fucking talking to me._ ”

Peter felt three steps behind Wade, perpetually, but this one really took the cake. “There’s no point in restraining me. I don’t have Carnage’s cell phone.”

Wade readjusted his grip on Peter. “Honey, this has nothing to do with the red goopy boy, and everything to do with you.”

Wade’s feet weren’t touching the ground. The heft of him wasn’t heavy, but it was extremely painful. Peter bit his lip because the pain had nothing to do with Wade’s intention to hurt him, and everything to do with a two hundredpound, heavily armed man hanging on pieces of Peter that he wished didn’t exist right now—namely all of it.

Ah, to be a brain unburdened by the weaknesses of a vulnerable meatsuit. Doom needed to get on that, stat.

“You’re tiny,” Wade shared in a conversational voice. “I was kind of hoping my weight would knock you down a peg. Or at least slow you down.” There was a horrible ache in Peter’s hips. He was definitely feeling slowed down right now. “Am I heavy?”

“Not really,” Peter said. Any other day but today, Wade’s weight would be nothing.

Wade was silent for a while. Then- “…I have the weirdest boner right now.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Just… get off of me. Right now.” He was at his limit.

Wade’s grip loosened, one foot dropping to the ground. “…you gonna run?” he asked, voice muffled and distrusting.

“I was thinking 2038 would be a great year for a mayoral campaign actually. If they allow masks.”

Despite this, Peter sat down on the roof, too exhausted for this conversation. Wade adjusted with him, no longer hanging off him but still pulling him into a loose, confining hug. Annoyed, Peter pushed at his arm pointedly, then stopped when the duct tape under his palm squelched. He snatched his hand back, realizing there was more give to the limb than humanly possible.

Wade chuckled close to Peter’s ear, a little embarrassed. Now that Peter was paying attention, he realized that Wade’s Quirk was still at work, piecing together this world’s version of Humpty Dumpty.

Remorseful, Peter reached out to the limb he’d shoved, feeling the ropey movement of Wade’s healing factor against his fingers. He didn’t push again. His fingers curled around it instead, protective. 

“You can pull me apart, if you want,” Wade said cheerfully. “I’m held together by little more than spit, glue, and pixie dust. But that’s the only way you’re getting away from me.”

That didn’t seem healthy. “Wade…”

“I’ve been looking for you ever since I saw you on the news,” Wade revealed, voice tight. “ _There’s the man who kept me from murdering a guy with no priors_ , I thought. _And they’re shredding his reputation to pieces._ I wanted to hide you until things blew over. Give you a new identity too, if you needed it. I even got Dom to empty some of our emergency funds to do that.”

Wade had really been about to pull his ‘reform the villains’ tactics with Peter. Was that how badly Spider-Man had been slandered to the public? The Life Foundation sure worked fast.

Wade buried his face in the back of Peter’s neck. “Then Carnage got you, and I thought… no way Webs is anything but dead. What a fucking _waste_ . I had to stop watching, I was so upset.” Wade huffed out a laugh. “Then Big Bad Daddy Pierce calls me personally and tells me he’d forgive the lack of _unjustifiable homicide_ if I fixed a wee little information leak—and that information leak was _you_! You survived Carnage! I was so happy. I could still save you.”

Peter was quiet, head bowed. His eyes were heating up.

“But then I called you to get the phone back and resolve this stupid mess, you weren’t you. You were _Ned_. And, in that moment, I knew exactly who you really were. All the evidence just… snapped together.” Wade smoothed down a bit of hair poking out of Peter’s mask. “I felt so fucking dumb, Petey-”

“I’m sorry,” Peter muttered miserably.

“Don’t,” Wade said flatly, probably because that was a hurt that couldn’t be soothed by a simple apology. Peter had really fucked up. Wade sighed. “It’s been an awful day, hasn’t it? God, I want to go home.”

So did Peter. Inserted in his fantasy of an after to all this was suddenly a vivid desire to go home with Wade once again. To sleep. To eat. To be normal. It was sad, really. That in the privacy of his mind, he wanted for so little.

Peter’s mind was racing for a solution to make that fantasy a reality. “Then… let’s go down to the quad. If you and I join everyone, we could-”

Wade’s rejection came down hard. “No,” he said. “Absolutely fucking not.” There was a pause. “I want to be a hero for you, Petey. I really do. But if the consequence of doing that—of letting you go—is to watch you die, then make me the biggest villain you ever did see.”

Wade sounded really upset. Peter found himself swinging between resentment and guilt. He’d thought, of all people, Wade would be the one who understood the importance of keeping up the fight, no matter the consequences. That Wade looked at him and saw someone unable to keep going was as big of a sting to his pride as a slap in the face.

“The only one around here that’s as banged up as me is you. Please. Let the other people fight. You need to rest.”

Peter fumed silently. People had been telling him that all day long! Peter was sick of it.

But…

He also felt the truth of it now more than ever, and that was an awful feeling. Peter’s only value was his perseverance. He always got up after being knocked down. Pain, fear, and suffering never stopped him in his tracks. And he could always endure long enough to push past his limits to do what needed to be done. He worked hard on those things. He was proud of them.

But hearing someone he loved very deeply beg him not to kill himself made him far less proud.

Maybe it was time to rest. Maybe it was time to heal.

Flexing his jaw, he turned his face into Wade’s chest, saying nothing. Sensing his victory, Wade hugged him tighter. Sounding relieved, he thanked Peter repeatedly, kissing the crown of his head over and over. It was terribly warm and terribly affectionate, and all Peter could think was that he was being rewarded for failure. He pressed his head deeper into Wade’s chest, trying to chase away that sick feeling.

He kept one ear out for the battle still continuing below.

-

Things went horribly. Eventually.

The Life Foundation’s hired goons were scaling the ice maze that previously kept them contained at a much faster rate. Worse, the friction from Pietro’s Quirk was melting the ice, causing him to slip and skid out of his control. Despite his exhaustion, Bobby bolted out into the quad to help, trying to harden the ice under Pietro’s feet before any of the agents caught him off balance on top of the walls.

Doreen was ten steps ahead of him, shredding up the walls in her haste to climb higher and back up her teacher. Some of the emerging agents opted to aim for her instead of the speed demon on their own level. To keep them off her, three people from Support Track—and a massive, stone skinned freshman—rigged a training bot to a car battery and let it fly, sending baseballs at Life Foundation agents at 100 miles per hour.

But it wasn’t enough. Doreen got caught in the shoulder and slid a foot down, barely softening her fall with the cushion of her tail. Blood bloomed over her shoulder, and she scrambled for cover. She got it when Bobby slid to a stop next to her, yanking up a small barrier of ice. It was weak and thin, though, and it cracked under the force of the projectiles being sent their way.

More students rushed to their defense, some Quirks sparking more obviously than others, but that didn’t change matters. They were finally being overrun.

On the other side of the quad, chaos was ensuing. Carnage had almost been captured by a sound prison. However, somehow able to endure the soundwaves better than predicted, he immediately freed himself. Rather than freeing his other Guard members, he went after Kitty, teeth first. She phased through the psychopath with minimal injuries but was immediately put on the defensive. The makeshift flamethrowers were out of fuel, and her enemy’s body was constantly transforming—sometimes successfully. Sometimes not.

Ned was down there with them. If anyone could figure out how to contain a body that couldn’t decide if it was human or a goopy monster, it was him. Peter could see him even from here, his hands on his head. It seemed like their peers were going with the brute force method for now, though, and with disastrous consequences. Carnage’s exoskeleton might have been permanently damaged by his interaction with MJ, but he had a razor blade on him, and he thought nothing of using it to tear up future Pro Heroes. Instead, he reveled in it, laughing maniacally even as he was surrounded, five to one and counting.

Beyond all of them—the scattered agents and the partially trapped members of the Guard, the mixed squads of baby heroes and their teacher and civilian counterparts—another conflict was playing out horribly. Another struggle was taking a turn for the worst.

Venom was losing in his one-on-one fight against Riot. _Badly_.

Peter should have predicted it. All the signs had been there. Despite Venom’s desire to be a hero, despite their joint decision to volunteer, Eddie Brock was no Pro Hero. He was a journalist, a writer and a talker by nature. He may have been wearing a monster of a Quirk, but he was just a man underneath it all. A civilian. A guy using his own Quirk to cover the ears of his monster partner so that it could experience something resembling free will.

And Riot was shredding him to pieces. And Venom was healing him, getting them up on their feet again-

Only for Riot to shred them some more. And at some point, Venom wasn’t going to be able to heal him anymore, and Eddie was going to die. And who knew what would happen to Venom after that.

Everyone else was running to back up each other, but no one was running to back up Venom. And Eddie was going to die because of it.

Peter slowly pulled his feet underneath him.

The stealthy attempt was useless; Wade read him like an open book. But he’d been made complacent by Peter’s early surrender. He wasn’t even hanging on to Peter anymore, having busied himself with his pockets to ready them for the long haul of sitting on the sidelines. He was clearly regretting that. He scrambled forward now, arm extended. “Peter, wait-”

Wade was too late. His fingertips barely skimmed Peter’s arms before Peter had jumped off the side of the roof and into the frenzied quad below.

-

Everything was louder down here, but Peter couldn’t pause. He ran instead, sidestepping over pieces of concrete, formerly parts of buildings. He leapt over crumpled bodies, some groaning, some not. He flung himself over fallen trees and artificial rifts carved in the ground by powerful Quirks.

Then, in the middle of the quad, he flipped over a metal trash can, ripped it straight out of the concrete it was bolted in, and hurled it at Riot in one complete motion.

Peter’s aim was true. But the weight and force of it meant little to a creature of Riot’s size. He merely stumbled, turning his attention from his nemesis on the floor to Peter’s approach.

But it was enough of a distraction for Venom; shoving himself free, Venom bolted, flinging himself to—and up—one of ESU’s remaining buildings, disappearing out of sight.

Watching this, Riot cackled, tongue lolling out of his mouth. It wasn’t a happy sound. The roughness and the viciousness of it made Peter’s hair stand on end.

“ _Venom._ Always fleeing from the reality in front of you.” He tipped his head to the side, as if conversing with someone else. “We will find him later. We. Always. _Do._ ”

It sounded like a threat. It felt like one, jolting Peter from head to toe in alarm. And that was before Riot’s head swiveled on that thick neck, before those white, inhuman eyes settled on where he stopped, where his instincts screamed at him to go no further. “Spider-Man… was it?”

Peter shivered. He remembered jumping off of a bridge because of this guy. The need to flee hadn’t dissipated with time. He forced a bright tone. “You bet!” Riot took a step forward. Peter rapidly took two steps back. There was fifteen feet between them, but his dread was telling him it wasn’t enough space. “Wait, don’t tell me. You must be a member of my fan club.”

Riot looked him up and down from head to toe, sneering. “The hype doesn’t match reality. I remain… _disappointed._ ”

Peter hopped back another three steps before walking to the left. They started circling each other. “That wasn’t a no!” Peter made a rectangular gesture. “It’s the body pillows, isn’t it. Yet another unrealistic body standard to live up to…”

Riot’s face wrinkled in disgust. “The only thing I have in common with your fanbase is a desire to expose you for the weak coward you truly are.”

“Expose me?” Peter echoed. “That’s rude. You haven’t even bought me dinner first!” 

Riot’s eyes jumped behind him. Peter didn’t fall for it—what a way to invite him to attack—and so just barely bit down on a yelp when a hand clamped on his shoulder. But his spidey sense remained silent; he didn’t fight it.

Riot’s disgust grew. “Your assignment was to seal the information leak, not cozy up to it.”

Riot’s barbed greeting failed to hit its target. Wade stepped up to Peter’s side, his hand tightening once before dropping. He looked at Peter for several seconds, frowning hard enough to be seen even through his mask. He was visibly unhappy. Peter’s inability to sit things out for a change was going to do what his lying and snooping didn’t—damage their relationship beyond repair. He must hate Peter so much by now.

But Wade said nothing, staring into Peter’s eyes. Then he looked back at Riot. “If I had known it meant killing an innocent civilian, I would have told Pierce to shove a grenade up his ass,” he said. He pulled one of his katanas out with a showy swing, the white eyes of his mask narrowing to thin slits. “But you’ll do as a proxy.”

He was Peter’s ally—for now. 

“Your failure to follow your mission parameters changes very little,” Riot said. He paused, touching the side of his head, as if listening into something on a hidden earpiece. His expression twisted, but it was hard to tell if it was in rage or in delight. “We should wrap this up quickly before any members of the press grow too bold and pass our barricades. We shall not rob them of the media sensation of the ages.”

“Media sensation?” Peter echoed, confused. “I thought this was a coverup.”

At this, Riot laughed. There was nothing of the formal, professional leader of the Guard in the person in front of them now. Only the satisfied cruelty of a man whose job was already done, writ large on that monstrous visage. If this was what he was like behind the scenes, Peter suddenly knew why none of his agents stepped within five feet of him, and why none of them offered him backup.

Venom was frightening because he was inhuman and violent. Carnage was frightening because he was deranged and made little secret of the fact that he ate people.

Riot was frightening because he’d been playing a deadly round of 5D chess with people who were just realizing there was a game happening at all.

As if dictating a headline, Riot said, “ _Formerly Reformed Villain Murders Students, Teachers, Civilians at Pro Hero School._ ” His wide mouth pulled into a spikey grin, revealing multiple rows of teeth. “I’ll have to workshop it a bit with my secretary, but it has some flare, don’t you think?”

Peter felt an intense feeling of dread. There was only one reformed villain in the quad tonight.

Wade’s footing shifted slightly. “What the hell are you yammering on about?” Despite his strong showing, his voice was unsteady. “I didn’t kill anyone. Not even the girl-”

Riot clucked his tongue at him, waving a finger. “Ah ah. But that is not the story we will tell, Deadpool! The Central Hero Agency is writing the press release as we speak.”

Wade flinched at that, eyes widening.

Carelessly, Riot lifted up an arm, transforming it into a gigantic axe. He admired it in the dim shine of the school’s emergency lights. “The Guard will forever be known as the first responders to this great tragedy. And you will be known as Public Enemy Number One once again.”

So that was their angle. Wade seemed petrified. Peter tried to catch his attention, whispering his name quietly.

But Wade didn’t seem to hear him. “You can’t kill me. I’ll tell everyone what you’ve done.”

“Who are they going to believe?” Grinning madly, Riot spread out both arms, as if he was appealing to an arena of fans. “A mass murderer or their generous—but firm handed—protector?”

Peter was right. Riot was so much worse than Carnage. He felt sick. His mind churned with all of the good Wade had tried to put into the world. His assignments. His agency. Every villain he’d reformed. His friends. His relationship with Peter. Even his ill-thought-out attempt on the roof to keep Peter grounded.

Betty had always claimed that the Central Hero Agency had seen Wade as a convenient and useful tool. Peter never imagined one of those uses would be as a _scapegoat._

“Spidey,” Wade said quietly. Then, louder and with conviction, he said, “They’ll believe Spidey.”

There was not a single shred of doubt in that. Not even after tonight. Wade was going to break his heart.

Riot’s lip curled. “Not if he dies first.”

Peter made the mistake of watching the axe. The other arm shot at him first, eating up the space between him and Riot in mere seconds.

It never touched him.

He was shoved back and out of the way, and he was inadvertently given front row seats to the gory horror that was Wade getting speared straight through the chest.

For Peter, time seemed to stop as his whole world grounded to a halt. All he could process was Wade’s back to him, skewered in his place, as a desperate mantra of denials repeated in his head.

But Wade was stronger than that. He merely grunted and sliced through the offending arm. Then he pulled out his gun and unloaded a full clip into Riot’s body as the monster propelled himself forward.

-

Self-preservation kicked in quickly. Peter skidded to his feet and hurled himself away, barely ducking under the series of swipes aimed at his head.

Webs were useless. Riot broke through all of them, and he used them to slam Peter around if he forgot to let go. Swords were a little more effective, if only in defense. Hitting Riot as hard as he could with his fists and feet seemed to do the most damage, but it put Peter scarily close to Riot’s body—and Peter had almost become his pincushion. Twice.

All he could was swipe, defend, dodge, over and over and over again.

There was no winning against this guy, Peter thought in blind terror, and promptly banished it—right before he was sent flying into a tree.

Thank god Wade was so indefatigable.

Taking a page out of Wade’s book, Peter ripped a light pole out of the ground—there went his tuition—and caught the next downward swing of Riot’s ax with it. He got an intimate, up close encounter with what a confused Riot looked like, then Riot was rocketing back in agony. In his distraction, Wade had climbed up on him and stabbed two of his combat knives into his upper back, using them as handholds until Riot successfully threw him off.

Not so easily deflected, Wade rolled to a crouching position, already digging in his belt pockets before he’d even landed.

“Batter up,” he warned Peter, tossing something at him. Peter swatted at it with his light pole, realizing, too late, it was _a live grenade_.

(“Fucking _Wade_ ,” Peter spat as Wade giggled guiltily.)

At that point, it was blowing up in Riot’s face with a force so hot and concussive, Peter could have sworn he saw a hint of a human reemerge in that harsh face.

And still, Riot did not die. But he was stumbling. And suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Taking advantage of this, Peter and Wade closed in on him immediately—and for a brief period of time, it was _perfect_. Riot was staggering. Peter’s hits were landing. And Wade-

Focused and furious, Wade was something else entirely. He was destruction and violence personified. Every time Wade lost a weapon, he had another on hand. He was relentless and creative. Nimble and brutal. This is why people fear him, Peter thought. And yet, Peter couldn’t help a strange surge of elation and even admiration. Because, somehow, despite the way this had started, Wade and Peter were completely synergized, feeding off each other’s movements instinctively. Like this wasn’t their first time teaming up, but rather their hundredth time. Their thousandth time, even. Riot never had a chance to catch a break.

They were winning. Riot was on the retreat. They were pummeling and battering Riot between the two of them—Wade with his weapons and Peter with his fists and feet and the occasional piece of campus property. They were doing it.

Then one of Wade’s katanas was flung awry, nearly punching a hole through Peter. Peter dodged it, letting it fly past him. Then, spinning, he shot a web at it, snapping it back at Riot with such speed and force, the business end slammed straight through his head.

It didn’t kill him. Peter would not have to grapple with his morality today. Instead, it _infuriated_ Riot, which was even worse.

Because it wasn’t Peter he went after.

No longer allowing himself to be torn between a fight on two fronts, Riot swarmed on Wade with the suddenness of a freak mudslide. Seeing the change, Wade tried to put distance between them but it was too late. Riot was in his face.

A massively large hand swelled into him, curling around—and crushing—Wade’s torso. Bones crunched loudly, and Wade, robbed of breath, could only gurgle wetly. Riot spun, smashing Wade’s back against the concrete so hard that the surface shattered into a cobweb of cracks. He slammed him down again. And again. And again. And one more time until all Wade did was hang there, limp. Then he dropped Wade on the floor like he was a piece of trash.

Wade didn’t move. Because Wade was dead. Again.

Because of Peter. 

-

There was a certain level of comfort, knowing a loved one was basically immortal. That said, it was the comfort of distance. The comfort of both the logic and the hindsight one had in the safety of an armchair, far away from any real conflict.

In the heat of things, however, that comfort did little to quell Peter’s burning rage.

Just as Wade hit the ground for the final time, Peter sprinted at Riot’s back, threading a thick rope of web between his fingers. And then, while Riot was distracted, he leapt on the much larger man’s back, climbing up it. He looped his webs around Riot’s neck like a garrote, planting his heels in Riot’s nape for maximum level. 

It worked for a second. The gooey exoskeleton split under the force of his full strength, and his web bumped up against something vital to a continued existence, like a soft human throat desperately pulling in air. He pulled even harder, ignoring the hands that clawed up his legs. Underneath him, the Quirk writhed and the host panicked. Riot exploded into featureless ribbons of gunk, and, underneath Peter’s foot, a terrified pair of dark, familiar eyes looked up at him.

He knew this face. It was the face of Carlton Drake.

And Peter. Didn’t. Care. Every fiber of Peter’s being screamed for death—death of the one who killed Wade.

Intention was a desire pushed into a plan and backed up by willpower. And, in that moment, Peter absolutely intended to commit murder. Carlton had survived Wade—was surviving him even now, given the sword in his head—but Carlton would not survive Peter.

Enraged, Peter was glaring down at the man he was killing, waiting for him to die.

Then, abruptly, Peter was being swarmed.

Ribbons of that awful Quirk twisted up his legs, pressing into open wounds greedily and wrapping up his calves. It surged up his body like a tidal wave or perhaps even a poisonous flood, overtaking his thighs, his hips, and his torso in seconds. Then utter blackness snapped over his eyes and ears, creeping deep into his ears and mouth with itching fingers.

“Yes,” something hissed in his ear. “Your bloodlust. It’s _delicious._ ”

Peter’s eyes widened and his body went stiff, no longer under his own control.

He wasn’t blinded either. That was the worst thing. Peter could see. But he didn’t see Riot’s human counterpart. He didn’t see ESU. He didn’t even see Wade’s body, face down on the ground.

Instead, he saw an infinite, creeping void. Cold hunger gnawed at his belly, and, at the sight of him, something in the repeating darkness turned, millions of voices rising in the silence, screaming with concussive force-

Then he snapped back like a rubber band. Peter was thrown off, dropped to the floor. Gasping for air, Peter curled up on his side. He yanked up his mask, almost pulling it all the way off in his efforts to scratch at his ears and scrape at his mouth. He did it until he bled, and the coppery taste was almost a relief.

Anything but that ravenous void.

When Peter finally calmed down enough to stop hurting himself, he realized there was a conversation happening right next to him—a one sided match between Riot and his host.

“What are you doing?” Carlton snarled. “You have me. I’m your host! You’re bonded to _me_ !” There was a pause, then the hoarse voiced human screamed, “I don’t care how strong he is! I don’t care if he’s _perfect_.”

There was so much bitterness in that one word. Peter heard hate, jealousy, and possessiveness all at once. Grimacing, Peter coughed heavily, holding onto his chest. He was lightheaded and dizzy, and not all of that came from being, what, possessed? By a Quirk? He coughed even harder.

The tone abruptly shifted, cajoling this time. “You want him? Then eat him. Yes, eat him.” Two voices intertwined, one far deeper than the other. “Eat him. _Eat him_.”

Peter’s spidey sense _screamed_. He leapt out of the way, narrowly dodging the hands reaching for him. Rolling quickly, he landed on all fours. He looked up then, his vision swimming and multiplying. Riot was fully recovered, laughing lightly, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Carlton, it seemed, had been successful in diverting Riot’s hunger to bond to a hunger to feast instead.

Great, Peter thought. His hands were shaking. Shifting to a crouch, he looked down at them. They were still aching from the force he’d just used on Carlton. He didn’t have the willpower to do again. Or the stomach.

God. Had he really just…

People were yelling for him. All over. Many voices overlapping each other, each one more urgent than the last. He turned the closest, registering Doreen’s intense face. Breathless, she didn’t yell again, but instead pointed to the science building. When he swept his gaze around, looking for others, they all pointed in the same direction.

Well. Even a half-dead guy could take a hint.

Peter darted to the left, missing Riot’s lunge by inches, then he bolted for the science building. Screaming after him, Riot followed him like a bat out of hell, shaking the ground with the force of his gait. Peter glanced behind him only once, regretting it. Others were trying to slow Riot with everything from a small ice wall to a Molotov cocktail created from the remains of one very familiar whiskey bottle. But Riot was catching up with Peter fast, fast enough to swipe at his retreating back, fast enough to hit him, fast enough for it to cut.

Gritting his teeth, Peter moved with the extra momentum. He somersaulted even though his back was now burning and put on a new burst of speed, looking for whatever he was supposed to be heading to. So blind was his trust in everyone today, he never even questioned that they were trying to help.

And that trust was rewarded. Just as Peter passed the end of the science building, a bloodied McCoy whipped around the corner with the school’s pride and joy—a massive, ten ton, bronze cast traditional bell they all affectionately called Old Hank.

Beast slammed the bell so hard on Riot’s head, it cracked in two.

-

Peter was so surprised by this, he straight up fell over. So did Riot, for other reasons. He was alive still, amazingly, and all Peter could think was that he only came so close to killing Carlton because Riot wanted to jump hosts. What the hell were these things, anyway?

McCoy didn’t seem surprised. “Spider-Man, grab one of his arms,” he ordered, and Peter scrambled to follow his lead.

They forced the disorientated Riot to his knees for reasons unknown to Peter. “A sound prison?” Peter suggested unsteadily, looking for it. Not very far away, three sound prisons were fully operational. Even Carnage was captured, wrapped tightly in rope too. All three of the captured Guard members were watching in interest.

A moment later, Venom landed in front of them, bulging suspiciously in the torso region.

“We can’t spare any of them, lest the others go free. And we can’t trust anyone’s surrender until the Hivemind is gone,” McCoy explained shortly. “Venom. Now, please.”

At the sound of the missing Quirk’s name, Riot laughed coarsely, his head rolling forward and his eyes struggling to focus. The lump in Venom’s chest opened out. MJ tumbled out, red-faced and gasping. Riot instantly tensed. “You.” He knew her face too. Peter now knew why Venom had hid her. Riot would have fought harder. Even now, he was starting to weakly pull.

MJ got to her feet and walked over to Riot in quick strides, her eyes whitening eerily under the force of her Quirk.

She didn’t get within three feet of Riot before a spike punched through her chest and out the other end. Peter’s very bones turned water and mush. He watched in horror as she looked down, confused, blood bubbling up in her mouth. Behind her, Venom was equally stunned, hands stretched out as if to undo what had already been done. 

Peter was tossed first, then McCoy. Peter hit the ground hard. He rolled over on his shoulder, seeing Riot brush off their best attempt at ending this.

“Failed again, loser,” Riot taunted, ripping the sword out of his head. The metal clatter of it hitting the floor was piercing, as loud to Peter as MJ’s labored breathing. Riot stood, dusting off his shoulder lightly. When he spoke, the voice that came out was none other than Carlton Drake’s. “Any other bright ideas, Brock? Love to watch you crash and burn, as usual.”

Venom staggered back, the expression on his face approaching fear. So this was how Venom was going to learn that being a Hero wasn’t enough, Peter thought. That, despite people’s best efforts, bad things happened to the wrong people. That, even with teamwork and goodwill, sometimes even the worst bullies escaped all consequences.

Being a Hero wasn’t all that it was chalked up to be after all.

“Actually,” someone rasped. It was MJ, still standing. She was looking up at Riot now. Her white eyes had yet to fade. “This. Works. Fine.”

She clamped both hands on the spike killing her, and she killed it right back.

-

If Peter never had to hear another person scream, he’d die happy. As it was, the person screaming now was Carlton. This, he felt, he could ignore. Carlton rapidly shrank in size, height, and bulk, his Quirk falling off him like so much dull and shriveled goo. By the time he had the sense to stop stabbing her, MJ’s Quirk had taken its full toll.

Carlton sank on his knees amongst the ruins of his Quirk, utterly heartbroken. “You killed him. What a cruel and evil Quirk you have.”

“Look who’s talking,” MJ breathed grimly, blood staining her teeth. She sank to the floor too, her expression ashen.

Peter got up and hurried over. He was beat by McCoy and Venom, but only because he paused to shoot Carlton’s feet and hands with webbing—not that he seemed inclined to move.

So he was surprised when Venom dragged MJ to him, disappearing her in the front of his exoskeleton again. When McCoy tried to reason with him, Venom actually roared at him, spittle flying and needle teeth flexing. He curled around the lump of her body protectively like a mother with its young.

Peter was panicking. McCoy, on the other hand, stayed calm, an expression of reluctant understanding on his face. “Please, Venom,” McCoy was saying. “There’s a small possibility we might be able to put her under stasis as well if you’ll just-”

McCoy was ignored.

And then Peter’s fear morphed into anger. “Drop her, Venom,” he snapped. MJ deserved kinder final moments than that horrible void.

“No,” Venom snarled back.

“Drop. Her.” Peter bellowed each word at the unresponsive Quirk, his voice breaking. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Not to MJ. Not now.

Venom jumped back several feet before hunching over again. “Back off!”

What a foolish and hopeless scene this was. More and more people were gathering around, watching at a distance as Venom freaked out and hunkered down around her. Hushed conversations broke out, and, as it turned out, even some prisoners had opinions to share.

“Doing that isn’t going to save her.” Harry rolled his head against the wall, eyeing Venom with distaste. Venom bared his teeth at him. “You’re delaying the inevitable. You’re not bonded to her. You’re not going to _heal_ her. Just drop her already.”

Peter walked over to him. “What about you, Harry?” he asked urgently, seeing a chance. “Any juice left?” His hopes were dashed when Harry lifted his hands with a frown, his hands sparking uselessly.

“Drop the deadbeat instead,” said a muffled voice. When no one responded, Flash raised his head out of his knees. He had streaks of dirt over his face. “Drop the deadbeat, bond with the girl. Save the day.”

This meant nothing to Peter, but to Venom? Flash might as well have slapped him across the face. “You would like that wouldn’t you?” Venom spat, eyes narrow. “You always were jealous of my free will-”

“Dude, Riot’s dead,” Flash bit back. “I don’t hear the Hivemind. Do you? Drop the deadbeat, save the girl. How hard is that to understand?!” This last sentence came out in a strained yell.

Flash wasn’t entirely irredeemable. He was never going to get back everything he destroyed, nor would he ever be trusted by his classmates ever again, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the so-called Hivemind. Peter was still angry at Flash—and angrier at Harry—for the bombs they dropped in the middle of all their lives just for the sake of power. But a small part of him appreciated Flash’s attempt to help. As long as it was an attempt, not the trap Venom assumed it was.

The head of Venom’s exoskeleton parted, baring Eddie’s face. Eddie was pissed. “That ‘deadbeat’ talk is just precious coming from you, a whiny ass rich boy paying top dollar for a stupid power up mushroom!” He sucked in a breath, clearly ready to get into it with Flash. Then he stopped.

“Wait. Venom. V. _Buddy._ What are you doing?”

What Venom was doing was peeling away from Eddie, stretching out in strips and dropping onto a newly exposed MJ like an asphalt-flavored piece of Laffy Taffy. Venom was taking Flash’s advice.

Eddie tried to stop Venom to no avail, grasping big fistfuls of goop only for it to slide through his fingers harmlessly. “Don’t do it! You’ll kill her!” he yelled. Venom never responded, too busy covering MJ from head to toe.

This was such a bad idea. Peter hurried back over to her, dropping to his knees at her side. “MJ?”

MJ didn’t respond either. When she flexed hard, almost seizing, Peter panicked and tried to rip the goop off her face. All he got for efforts was a hastily formed mouth and a sharp bite to the heel of his palm. Meanwhile, MJ continued to twitch and shift and shake in place as Venom tried to find something in her—anything in her—that allowed them to be compatible. He searched, she trembled, and they watched until she finally, finally stopped.

Despite his feelings about this, Peter held his breath. They all held their breaths.

Then the lump that was MJ sat up. It contracted, forming tightly to her body instead of gathering on her like an unwanted mess. White eyes and a big, fanged mouth appeared, already frowning. Then the exoskeleton split around her head, revealing springy curls and an almost identical grimace.

“Huh,” MJ said. “Not sure how I feel about this.” She poked with interest at where the hole in her chest was supposed to be.

The tension broke immediately. Several people laughed out loud, and not necessarily at her words, but rather at the unexpected turn for the better. Peter found himself sagging in relief, hanging off her arm. Then, throwing all pretenses to the wind, he looped an arm around her waist, resting his head against her shoulder. His face was hot and tight.

Thank god, he kept thinking. Thank god. Not everyone had Wade’s healing Quirk, after all.

McCoy settled on his hip too, sighing exhaustedly. “Any chance that can be repeated?” he asked. “My goddaughter is very injured.”

MJ’s expression twitched with sympathy. She patted her belly. “If I’m reading Venom right, he’s all tapped out.”

“Like the rest of us,” McCoy said wryly. He looked around the quad. Most skirmishes were over, ending successfully with detained agents. Other agents were watching at a distance, not engaging with anyone anymore. More were regrouping beyond the maze in a strong enough force to cause some trouble, but they seemed to be waiting for something. Orders, perhaps. Or maybe for a new hierarchy to form around voids in their leadership. 

Who won? It was hard to tell. But if the good guys could keep the Guard contained, the day was theirs, and they all knew it.

Maybe this was part of the stalemate where everyone parted to lick their wounds in peace before fighting another day. Or maybe this was the part where the bad guys took advantage of their exhaustion and wiped them out once and for all. Peter didn’t know. But he was willing to follow anyone who was ready to lead.

Coming to a conclusion, McCoy nodded once. “Okay. Good work, all. Let us reconvene in the-”

He was interrupted by the soft laughter of one Carlton Drake.

-

It was strange, hearing such a self-satisfied sound from someone who, as of minutes ago, Peter had dismissed as broken. He was really laughing now, his head thrown back, totally immersed in his mirth. It was deeply unsettling. 

“Do you have something to say?” McCoy asked Carlton tersely. “Be careful how you respond. You have no power here.”

Carlton stopped laughing. His face settled into a wide smile. “I was powerful before Riot, Doctor, and I will become more powerful after him. You, as always, lack imagination.”

Despite being bound to the floor by Peter’s webs, he seemed comfortable there, like he would rather sit on the hard dirt in the middle of a winter night in New York City than on any other arrangement available to him. He’d made it into his throne, his perch from which he would judge them, and everything about his demeanor made Peter’s hackles lift.

“Let me break it down for you,” Carlton said casually. “Riot was a tool. A beloved one. Like a tank! Tanks are useful and well loved, especially to generals.” An exaggerated frown crossed his face. “But you see, generals aren’t generals of _tanks_ , Doctor.”

Carlton clicked his tongue disapprovingly, shaking his head like they were fools making a rudimentary mistake. More than one person shifted uneasily, wary. Pleased by his vice grip over their collective consciousness, Carlton leaned forward, his eyes shining. “They’re generals of _people_ ,” he continued. “You may have robbed me of my tank, but you have not robbed me of my people.” He grinned widely, showing off perfect pearly whites. “And with my people, I will destroy you. All of you. Every last one of you here today.” He shrugged, serene. “Maybe not now. Maybe not today. But I will destroy you. If you don’t believe me, ask the thief.”

Eyes moved to Venom and then to his previous host. As the only one who knew the weight behind Carlton’s threats, Eddie was staring down at his hands, his face white.

Meanwhile, Carlton continued to beam at McCoy. “I will chip away at everything you care about. I will poison every bastion of support you will hide behind. Everything you touch will turn to ash. Everyone you love will turn against you. Your reputation will disappear. Your word would be denied. And no matter how hard you cry wolf to the media, the only story people will tell of today will be mine, not yours.” He cocked his head in an expression of faux concern. “What say you to that, Doctor? How’s that for having no power here?”

Chills ran down Peter’s spine. He’d seen quite a bit of evil in his day, but this guy… he was full on super villain evil. Destroy cities evil. Break the world evil. How the hell did someone like this even exist in this age with a robust Pro Hero Society in place?

But he was right. How were they supposed to follow up with this? They’d captured the Guard, and they’d destroyed Riot, but how did any of that really matter? If they turned Carlton in, he would be released immediately. The Central Hero Agency was on the side of the Life Foundation, after all, even to the point where they offered Wade up as a tool, a sacrifice, and a scapegoat. The corruption ran deep, deeper than what a single fight in a single day could resolve.

They could try and rush ahead of this and get their own story out there first (though that would be hard without Betty), but the second Carlton got a microphone, they were done. He’d get witnesses and he’d fabricate information, and it was him that would get the most coverage. He was the media’s darling, their pet millennial CEO superstar. Carlton was absolutely capable of doing this.

Just how many rivals and whistleblowers had gone the way of Eddie Brock? Just how many good people did Carlton shred, grind up, and then bury with the power of his company?

Peter didn’t know how to respond to this threat. It didn’t feel like a bluff. And McCoy, for all his experience in Pro Heroing, seemed at a loss for what to say. Maybe he too was unused to such a sincere promise to destroy people’s lives.

“Oh boy.” That voice did not belong to Dr. McCoy. “That’s gonna be a doozy to explain to your stakeholders, my guy. What a PR nightmare.”

Carlton flinched as two metal boots landed right behind him. He twisted around, staring up in shock at the new arrival. Iron Man, in all of his red and gold glory stood over him, arms crossed over his chest. Betty had made it after all.

-

Iron Man wasn’t the only arrival on the scene. A stony Black Widow marched a trio of cowed Life Foundation agents from around the building. The bottom half of Hawkeye was poking out of the exterior door that led to the auditorium. He seemed to be checking if people were okay without stepping too hard on Wanda’s toes; they apparently had some history.

The Hulk had landed in front of the ice maze, his sheer presence alone a most effective deterrent against the regrouping agents on the other side. Above them all, Falcon did a low sweep of the quad before landing next to a makeshift trench full of adoring Support Track students. Thor appeared from behind a group of bent trees, one of Wade’s arms slung over his shoulder. By the way Wade’s other hand cradled his own face, Peter could tell he was alive again. Peter was fiercely glad. At this. At everything.

The cavalry had arrived.

Another Iron Man landed next to the first. This one was virtually identical, save for the lack of a paint job. He too crossed his arms, and the effect was hellishly intimidating, especially to a man pinned to the ground.

“You- How are- Why-” Carlton was speechless. “Did you?”

“Ooh, let me guess where that one is going,” Iron Man said, his robotic voice doing nothing to hide unprofessional glee. “Did I disable your totally illegal emergency broadcast signal? Did I crash your psychological torture party with a bunch of lawbreaking Avengers? Did I lure SHIELD here with my shiny ass? Did I just livestream your psychotic ass threatening a bunch of people?” He bent at the waist. “Yes. Yes. Yes. And absolutely.”

Under the weight of these revelations, Carlton sagged in on himself, looking, for the first time, truly cornered.

The comment about SHIELD wasn’t toothless either. A quinjet was silently lowering itself near the remains of the ice maze, and several government agents were already filing out. Black Widow joined the group closest to her, giving them an update.

“…Two Iron Men?” McCoy asked, confused. Of all the things to focus on.

The unpainted Iron Man nodded. In a tone that could only be Rhodes, the suit said, “I’m the shiny. He’s the ass.” He jerked a thumb at the red and gold Iron Man.

Government agents were coming their way. Having SHIELD on the scene changed things, a fact that Carlton Drake didn’t miss. He was starting to freak out. He tried standing, but he kept getting pulled back to the ground by Peter’s webs, like a bungee cord. 

“Code blackout,” Carlton whispered. Then he surged again, screaming it in the air. “Code blackout! I repeat, cold blackout!” His eyes were practically bulging, his voice frantic. “Eliminate everyone! Eliminate every-”

The command ended in a wheeze when he was abruptly smacked in the back of the head. Then his voice was overpowered by another.

“The first person who follows that stupid ass order that will be sent straight to the Raft to serve out the rest of their life sentence.” This was decreed by one of the government agents, a tall bald man with an eyepatch and a long leather coat. “Any takers? You’re welcome to try me.” The agent swung his good eye over the quad quickly, and more than one person quailed under his gaze.

This wasn’t just any normal man. This was Colonel Nicholas Fury, head of SHIELD. And the Raft was the worst of the worst federal prisons for superpowered offenders, usually reserved for those who were such unbelievable threats to human society that their freedom would result in death for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. SHIELD operated it, and they absolutely had the authority to drop someone in with some of the scariest people on Earth.

Even the most hardened Life Foundation agent would be eaten alive.

No one took Fury up on his offer. Carlton collapsed in on himself, drained. While Carlton’s remaining agents opted to fade into the background or, more realistically, turn themselves into the SHIELD agents around them, Fury continued to circle their group with some interest.

Peter’s shoulders remained stiff. He didn’t dare look up. Peter thumbed his nose at the Central Hero Agency regularly, but SHIELD was a whole different ball game. And here Peter was, without his bat.

Fortunately, Fury didn’t seem very interested in Peter.

Meanwhile, Carlton seemed to regain some energy. “This is not your jurisdiction,” he spat. It was clear Carlton was trying to think of any possible way to turn this back in his favor, but this? This was desperate.

“Is it not?” Fury crouched down next to him. “I might be a lowly government busybody, but what page is ‘random murder’ in the Pro Hero handbook? Tell me. I’d love to read up on it.”

Carlton purpled. “We were given the authority to act, and we did. Talk to the Agency. The Guard has done nothing wrong.”

“You sure about that?” Fury asked conversationally, pulling out his phone. Then he started playing a video that he then showed Carlton. It was one of Carnage’s creepy vlogs. The audio, as always, was haunting. “Stark sent me this. This one of your guys?” He flipped the phone, looking back at it himself. “I’m not as hip with the trends as I used to be, but I’m pretty sure mukbangs don’t require people on the menu.”

Carlton’s mouth flattened. He shot a brief, venomous look at Carnage—or, at least, Carnage’s host—before saying, “That video is the product of an obvious smear campaign, and I-”

“Why don’t you do us all a favor and shut up? I don’t know about these other people, but I am _sick and tired_ of your revisionist history.” Fury smiled thinly. “But don’t worry, Mr. Drake. You’ll have your day to peddle your nonsense. After all, you and I have plenty to talk about. Decades worth of chats, even.”

At that, Carlton blanched.

“That’s right,” Fury said menacingly. “You might have a blank check from the Central Hero Agency, but SHIELD is the bank you cash that check at—and guess what. You’re all out of funds.” He stood, slipping his phone in his pocket. He walked away from Carlton, rolling his shoulder. “SHIELD isn’t involved in groundwork, I’ll give you that. In fact, the only reason why I’m here today is because SHIELD is in the thankless business of monitoring empowered individuals, and I was told that ESU was where I could find evidence of Quirk identity fraud at least a decade in the works-”

“Oh,” Stark said. “I could speak to that.”

Fury was already looking away from him. “Shove it, Stark. Everyone and their mother knows you and Colonel Rhodes share a suit.”

Both Rhodes and Stark flinched at that. They looked at each other. Then- “How,” Stark demanded flatly.

“You might have built the damn thing, but he wears it better than you,” Fury said, already bored.

“Well,” Stark muttered. “Can’t argue with that.”

“Avengers, you’re under my watch now. Consider yourself deputized.” None of the Pro Heroes there seemed surprised by this. It must have been part of the plan. “Assist the agents in rounding up Carlton’s minions.” Fury turned once, looking around the quad. “Until I figure out what the hell is going on, I’m detaining everybody.” He freed a hand, patting McCoy’s shoulder. “Some more politely than others. I’ll get you and your people situated and out of here as fast as humanly possible. Hot showers for everyone.”

“Thank you,” McCoy replied, voice choked. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

Stark cleared his throat. Fury rolled his eye. Then, teeth gritted, he said, “Any _vigilante_ types should read between the lines _and leave_ while my good eye is focused on Mr. Drake here.” Pointedly, he turned away from Peter and the rest of their small group on the ground. “You got ten minutes to disappear.”

It took Peter an excessive amount of time to realize Fury was talking to him. And Eddie, he supposed. But mostly him. Some civilians dared to ask if that covered them too, but a female government agent explained that the rule of law surrounding the definition of vigilante was whether or not they chose to run to the event in question. Given the fact that they were surrounded in a siege, legal protections regarding self-defense still applied.

It was a generous reading of the legal language, one that the Central Hero Agency would never abide by, but it seemed like that was about to change.

Peter unsteadily rose to his feet.

Next to him, Eddie seemed reluctant to leave without his Quirk, and so picked an awkward conversation with it. “So, um. New host, new you? Must be exciting, V.” Eddie seemed so lost. He was rubbing the back of his neck. “Maybe you prefer her or…?”

MJ snorted. “No maybe about it.”

Eddie scowled at her. “Hey, private conversation here.”

Peter swayed and caught himself on her shoulder. MJ looked up at him, concerned. Peter waved it away. He’d just gotten up too fast. He took a couple of shaky steps away from her.

Meanwhile, Eddie seemed to be trying to engage his old Quirk in a friendly way. The problem was, Venom wasn’t saying a damn word. The tone and meaning behind it resembled an amiable breakup in which one person had way heavier feelings than the other and was trying to be cool about the whole thing. By the time Eddie was stumbling through a painful request that Venom maybe call him sometime if he’d like, MJ was groaning at the exchange, rolling her eyes.

Fed up, she pivoted and slapped her palm against Eddie’s forehead, snarling about someone taking the fun out of everything.

Venom rapidly crossed the bridge of her arm, sliding slickly back into his original host. Eddie’s resulting smile was blinding.

(“He doesn’t prefer you over me at all!” he crowed.

“…You are _such_ a deadbeat.”)

Peter left their bickering behind and sat on the edge of a low planter that had been blasted to bits. He breathed in deeply, and then out.

He could leave. Sure. But… more importantly…

He could stop now. He could sleep. He could rest. He could get off his feet.

They weren’t alone. None of them were alone. The cavalry had come. The bad guys were being rounded up. SHIELD was taking over. Carlton wouldn’t be set free.

Peter could stop now. No one needed him. All he needed to do was leave, and everything would be resolved.

Peter was going to close his eyes for a bit.

Just a bit. Just a teensy bit. As a treat.

He jerked when a heavy gauntlet clapped him on the arm. “Did you not hear the time limit, buddy?” Stark asked. “Go on. Scram.”

Peter’s head lolled back. He looked up and up and up until he met Iron Man’s eyes. He smiled widely. “You came.”

Iron Man’s mask collapsed in on itself, revealing Stark’s smiling face. “You called,” he countered, sounding both smug and surprised. His eyes warmed. “You _endured_. Nice job, kid. Steve’s gonna be pissed he missed this one.” He clapped Peter’s good shoulder, and it was such a nice gesture. A good one. A dad one. If Peter ever had a coach or a mentor-

“You came,” Peter told him again, dragging out the second word. 

Stark’s smile slipped. “You’re slurring. Why are you slurring.” When Peter didn’t answer, he dropped to a knee in front of Peter. His gauntlets shot out, bracing both of Peter’s arms when Peter learned forward.

“You came,” Peter said again, simple happiness suffusing through him. His vision was spinning. Everything was covered in gray and black spots, but that was okay because _he came_.

Stark’s mouth flattened. “JARVIS. What am I looking at?”

“Life functions critical,” JARVIS reported dutifully. Oh. So he came too. “Blood loss at twenty-five percent. Internal bleeding from multiple sources.” With every word, his voice became fainter and fainter. “Fractured pelvis. Fractured ribs. Torn meniscus. Multiple lacerations. Fractured wrists. Adrenaline levels are dropping.”

Peter was going to close his eyes for a bit.

“Loss of consciousness imminent.”

Just a bit. Just a teensy bit. As a treat.


	18. Epilogue

Helen Cho came to America right before Christmas. The sudden appearance of her was like a holiday in and of itself, like a rockstar stopping in your favorite Starbucks before a major event. She brought her most prized invention with her—the Cradle—under guard, lock, and key, breaking years of protective precedent. The media had a field day covering the illusive overseas Pro Hero. The medical industry went bananas, trying to pull every favor they had for a few minutes with her. Pro Hero fanatics scrambled through their storage to find their ReGenesis merch in the vain hopes of getting an autograph.

And Peter, the first person from the ESU Incident to use the Cradle?

He missed every damn moment of it.

All Helen had needed in the end to show up was a single date with Thor—which, same. But that didn’t mean Peter felt any better about it. He had so many questions…

-

The Cradle had delivered Peter from the brink of death, but, in the interest of treating some of the other injured people (especially those in stasis), Peter was pulled out before he fully healed. After examining the remaining injuries, Stark had rustled up some paperwork, backdated some files, and slid Peter into a hospital bed as a car accident victim. This, Peter learned weeks after the deed was done, and Peter was still conflicted about it.

The sleight of hand tricks were meant to stick Peter on a timeline that gave him both an alibi and a place to be while the ESU Incident—as it was being called—happened to his classmates. Peter wanted to be happy that Stark went through so much trouble to hide his identity from SHIELD, but his mind kept coming back to the extra layer of lies, the lack of accountability on his own part, and the very necessity of his SI-funded hospital journey after his alleged incident involving Happy and his car.

(Happy was very upset about this. Pepper Potts held a straight-faced media conference, admitting to the accident. There were promises of scholarship and support. Peter hated everything about this, and Happy was never going to talk to him again.)

But Peter didn’t really have a chance to shape these decisions or enter his opinion about them. In fact, the first time Peter woke up was in the new hospital room as a so-called accident victim. Aware of voices, he kept his eyes shut, trying to figure out who was in the room with him.

The person on his left, holding his hand, had to be Aunt May. Her perfume was distinctive, and there was a familiar press of a wedding band against Peter’s fingers. Her hair was tickling his arm.

The person on his right wasn’t touching him, but his faint snoring made Ned’s identity obvious as well. And the fact that he smelled of both candy and Christmas just cinched it.

And the person at the doorway-

“Is that who I think it is?”

-was, unfortunately, Eddie Brock.

Peter tried very hard not to tense, keeping his face blank.

“Not so loud,” MJ was hissing. “People are sleeping, deadbeat.” Soles hit and slid over hard floors. More footsteps followed, pointed and quick near the door. By the way Eddie was complaining, Peter imagined she was pushing him out into the hallway itself.

They didn’t go very far. Just outside the doorway, Peter guessed. He could hear them easily past the droning sound of hospital equipment as well as the consistent murmur of voices.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Just. Uh. Wanted to check up on people?” Eddie sounded embarrassed. “This kind of stuff is hard to deal with. You know.”

There was a pause. Then, almost defensively, MJ said, “The court cases-”

“I’m not talking about that,” Eddie said immediately. “I mean… yeah. Court can be traumatizing itself sometimes. But I meant-” He cut himself off, making a disgusted noise. “You know what, scratch all that. Forget I said it.”

There was no way MJ was forgetting something as interesting as fresh blood in the water. “I thought Venom was the one who wanted to be a Hero…?”

At this jab, Peter expected more of Eddie’s salt and vinegar. Instead, there was a soft… laugh? “Yeah. Well. It’s growing on me.” Eddie’s voice sobered. “I could have done better there. Be better. Helped more people. I- You all were right to get on my case. Okay? I assumed V and I were the hail mary play you needed. But in reality, we were just another pawn in the mix. We didn’t save the day. We didn’t change  _ anything _ -”

“A knight, at least,” MJ corrected. “Not a pawn.”

Eddie stopped, clearly derailed from his point. Then- “What does that make you?”

“The queen. Obviously.”

Eddie snorted. Peter suppressed a smile. There was a ruffling sound, like a hand running through hair. Then Eddie was saying, “I’m gonna be in town for a while. I picked up some gigs with the Daily Bugle. They’re understaffed. If you’re interested.”

“Oh?” She was.

“Robbie had to fire a ton of people when he found most of his staff were pitching Life Foundation talking points. Instead of what was actually going on, that is.”

MJ sucked in a breath at that. “No wonder Carlton was sure he had control of the narrative,” she said darkly.

“Yeah, well. Robbie was pissed. He wanted more coverage on New York City going apeshit over Spider-Man.” Huh? But Eddie kept talking. “He didn’t understand why he kept getting canned press releases-”

“Wait, back up-” Thanks, MJ.

“Haven’t looked back at the past news cycle yet? I don’t blame you,” Eddie said. “As it turns out, New Yorkers start frothing with rage when outsiders pick on their pet vigilante. Only they are allowed to dunk on him or some bullshit like that. There were lie ins, sit downs, strikes,  _ protests _ . Even the subway was shut down. Rumor has it, a bunch of middle schoolers in Brooklyn started the whole thing, but… we’ll probably never know for sure.”

There was a warm feeling in Peter’s chest. He’d spent years protecting the neighborhood. He would have never guessed that, at some point, the neighborhood would rise up to protect  _ him _ . He was biting down on a very real smile.

“Wow. I guess he was the final straw.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it. You would have thought  _ Captain America _ would be the final straw, but nope. It was that damn spider kid.” Eddie’s voice turned wry. “In hindsight, though, maybe I should have expected it. When I came back here, before all this? An old lady in the subway made me miss my stop because I just  _ had _ to see her picture album. And it was all of  _ him _ . Cutouts, newspapers articles, the whole shebang. Pages and pages worth of shit, like he was her grandchild or something-”

“Aw,” MJ cooed, affectionately amused.

Eddie was starting to sound amused himself too. “Anyway. If you ever need a pick-me-up, you should see some of the videos uploaded of what happened while you guys were under siege.” There was a shuffling noise. “Nothing puts me in a better mood than seeing the mayor of a major city get nailed in the head with a Louis Vuitton bag-”

There were a bunch of sounds then—bad audio from a phone, a cart rolling past, a nurse talking. MJ,  _ giggling _ . Peter flexed his free hand, trying to hide his pout. He wanted to see too. But just then, a code was called over the intercom, and more people passed by his room, obscuring the sounds of Eddie and MJ’s conversation.

By the time it cleared up again a few minutes later, it seemed like they were saying good-bye. Sort of?

“Try not to die, loser,” was what MJ said instead.

“Right back at you,” Eddie replied, already at a distance.

There was a pause, then MJ’s shoes clicked their way back into Peter’s room.

At the sound of her entrance back in the room, Aunt May stirred, her hand squeezing Peter’s. “Oh, MJ,” she said faintly, her voice drowsy. Her chair squeaked as she sat up. “I’m sorry. Was that a doctor?” She yawned hugely.

“No, May, you’re good. It was just a friend.”

Peter could feel MJ’s eyes on him suddenly. Her gaze was as heavy as a car and twice as dangerous. Peter continued to feign sleep, sweating slightly. 

“Hey, May,” MJ said after a beat. “Wanna see something cool?”

There was a smile in May’s voice. She’d always liked MJ. “I’d love to.”

Without any warning, MJ pinched Peter’s left calf between two merciless fingers. Yelping, Peter sat up abruptly, eyes flying open. His hands flew towards MJ’s to stop the pressure.

At the same time, May jumped out of her seat, and Ned woke up, startled enough that he knocked his own chair over with him in it. His head popped up over the edge of the bed a moment later, his expression confused and alarmed and his hair standing on end.

Meanwhile, MJ’s smirk was triumphant and even a little mean. “You suck at pretending to be asleep, you prick.”

“Peter!” Ned barreled into his side, hugging him tightly. MJ’s smirk widened, even when May burst into tears and pulled him into a not exactly friendly headlock.

Oops.

-

Time passed. The holidays too. Soon enough, the new term was finally here—Peter’s last.

It took awhile for everything to get back to normal. Even standard classes were radically changed. There were voids everywhere, places where missing people used to be. Teachers, like Melissa Gold, who had always been nice, and Shiro Yoshida, who had been less so. Students, like JT James and Angelina Jones.

Friends, like Harry and Flash.

Classes carefully talked around it about the ESU Incident but only vaguely, a source of frustration for all the students who hadn’t been on campus for the crisis.

There was a reason for that.

When the non-Life Foundation parties to the siege were released (as promised, as soon as Fury could swing it), they were all forced to sign NDAs. Even Peter, who had been spirited away from the scene by Stark himself, had to sign one eventually.

(A few days after he was released from the hospital, a nondescript man in his fifties had sat down next to him in the subway. Without introduction, he pulled out a pen and handed Peter a clipboard with the NDA attached.

Peter, of course, tried to play dumb. The government agent—for he had to be an agent—let him sputter and lie ineffectively for a moment before saying, serenely, “We don’t need to discuss this further, do we, Mr. Parker?”

So Peter signed it. After skimming, of course. SHIELD knew exactly who he was. Stark was going to be pissed.)

But Peter’s classmates moved on from the top of the ESU Incident eventually. Those conversations gradually shifted from what they had lost to what had changed—and one of the biggest changes?

The shape of Pro Hero Society in the not-so-distant future.

As part of these conversations, Peter had watched in-class coverage of Alexander Pierce’s pretty little apology to the community, and he had scoffed openly when the grandfatherly man claimed to be taking accountability by stepping down from his role.

Corruption was always neatly brushed under the rug, he’d thought bitterly. After all, the shallowest of Google searches on the man revealed a career-long friendship with one Nicholas Fury. Fury himself had recommended Pierce for the leader of the Central Hero Agency when Osborn had been forced to step down. He wasn’t expecting Pierce to face any sort of consequence.

Six days later, however, Alexander Pierce was under arrest and a federal investigation was underway. Fury didn’t protect his friend at all, and mountains and mountains of evidence were starting to pile up. Much of it remained secret, but some of it bled into public hearings, which Peter’s teachers naturally decided to use as a learning opportunity.

It was during one of those hearings that Peter saw Wade for the first time since the ESU Incident.

They’d forced him to appear in court without his usual mask and attire. Not even a medical mask was allowed; Poor Wade had looked so miserable.

But also… incredibly  _ good _ . Peter hated the shallow part of him that perked up at the sight of Deadpool on trial. Whoever chose his civilian suit had given some serious thought to their decision. They dressed him up in a three-piece number that hugged tightly to his shoulders and accented his trim waist. The suit itself was navy and tan, which seemed to do the trick in softening his extensive scarring to the public. Fewer people were gawking, at least.

But… some people were still assholes. Peter watched at least one media personality gleefully mix his disgust with Wade’s scars with the apparently outlandish claim that “most prolific serial killer Pro Hero in history” (his words) had been nothing but an innocent, conscientious objector in this whole mess.

That was the lens that the investigation was looking through now. So much evidence had piled up while Peter was in the hospital that Wade was no longer being seen as a person of interest but rather as a victim and a witness for prosecution. Apparently, Pierce’s attempt to frame and use Wade was years in the making, and it had been deeply complicated by the fact that, as the head of Central Hero Agency, Pierce was absolutely authorized to order his Pro Heroes to do the exact crimes he was trying to pin on Wade.

Public hearing after public hearing was held. No matter the angle, only one truth stood out.

There was something deeply wrong with the Central Hero Agency.

And that, Peter thought, was that. Water was wet. Fire was hot. Glue was sticky. Peter fully expected people to move on without changing anything.

But he was proven wrong, in this case. In a matter of weeks, the impossible was happening.

The Central Hero Agency was being broken up.

It was being carved into smaller regions—and the power of those smaller umbrella agencies were a mere shadow of the overwhelming authority of the Osborn and Pierce years. Officials were removed and replaced with Heroes. Smaller Pro Agencies were given wider independence and freedom. Audits and independent reviewers scoured Central Hero Agency documents, providing recommendations and findings to the public. Greater transparency and accountability were being provided to the people.

This change was, to its detractors, a hugely distracting upheaval. But a necessary one, in Peter’s opinion. As for his end of things, Peter was just glad to still be in school and without a license yet. All he had on his plate was figuring out if he was finally willing to enter Pro Hero Society as a fully fledged member.

Could he be a true Pro Hero? Could he drop Spider-Man and go legit? Could he weather the disrespect that came with being a Hero Support instead of the real deal?

Authorities like the Central Hero Agency had rigged society against people without money or political power. While Peter resented every bit of that, the repercussion of decades of this type of engineering were still in effect. Gone or not, ESU Incident or not, Spider-Man or not… to the world, Peter Parker was still just a shitty sidekick. That, he was afraid, was the one remaining offense he might not be able to endure. 

Which is why he did a spit take when Tony Stark bluntly revealed his role behind Iron Man out of the blue.

And then, about twenty minutes after Stark, Rhodes outed himself as Quirkless.

The outcry was intense and bitter. Many immediately called for both men behind Iron Man to stand down and retire. Some waxed on and on about the example this set for others, sometimes even with a genuine concern for people’s safety. Others deconstructed every Avengers mission that Iron Man had led or been a part of, arguing (without evidence) that the outcomes would have been better if a “real” Hero had been in their place.

For their part, the Avengers rallied doggedly around Stark and Rhodes, defending their records staunchly. In the frenzy of it all, it made the group one of the most vilified Pro Hero sub-agencies in the nation. Even the drama around the Winter Soldier couldn’t even compare.

However, when the dust settled and tempers cooled, the truth remained clear. Iron Man, no matter who was wearing the suit, had saved millions of lives on thousands of different occasions. Power statuses—or even powers at all—made no difference there. People were reminded that Iron Man rose out of the rubble of Manhattan to face a threat so immense that it was considered an extinction level event by most world leaders.

And as new global, galactic, and even dimensional threats appeared, Iron Man (Rhodes and Stark alike) ascended to greet it. Over and over and over again.

Simply put, their track record spoke for itself.

This revelation—and America’s slow acceptance of it—challenged people’s perspectives on the role of Hero Supports and even the Quirkless in the grand scheme of Pro Hero Society. People reflected on it. Discussed it. Debated it. Introduced bills about it.

It became a national conversation. The start of a rally cry.

If Peter did get that damn license after all, he’d still be a shitty sidekick.

But maybe… not for long.

-

Valentine’s Day came and passed without much notice. Since Peter’s dorm was nonexistent, he’d had no chance of hiding his moping from his aunt. He had a hard enough time hiding his patrols from her as it was. He didn’t remember her being such a light sleeper before!

But about this, she was kind. Not drawing any attention to it, she cancelled her own date and sat up until eleven o’clock at night with him watching horrible horror movies. The next day, she prodded and pleaded and teased him out of bed so they could go store hopping for post-V day candies and those sweet, sweet discounts.

Which was why Peter now had a heart shaped candy box bigger than his whole damn head sitting in his lap. He pulled a seatbelt under it carefully, perturbed.

May was still cackling about their find and about the way she’d snatched it up from a Medusa-headed woman clogging the holiday candy aisle. Mutant-style Quirks were hardly as regulated as other ones, and some people—like the lady with snakes for hair—took brutal advantage of it, snapping up every discounted candy in sight just because she’d trained her hair to do her bidding.

But May was wily, and she wasn’t afraid of snakes. Even when a hundred of them hissed and spat in her face all at once.

“Worth it,” May sang, gleeful. They pulled out of the parking lot, re-entering traffic. May was a careful driver but traffic, as always, a nightmare.

“So. About that boy you like,” she said out of nowhere at a stop light. She sucked in a breath, then giggled. “I didn’t think I was ever going to say that again after what Harry did to you!  _ That boy you like. _ Ugh! I’m excited. Sorry. I’ll behave.”

“You knew I was dating Harry?” Peter said slowly, surprised.

May spared him a look, playfully pushing his shoulder. “Come on. I know you. You used to think the sun shined out of his ass.”

“You think Norman knew?” Peter asked, voice dropping.

“If he did, he’d be rolling in his grave right now.”

“Norman’s not dead, May.”

“Hey!” she said. “Knock it off. You don’t see me crushing your hopes and dreams.” A moment later, May winked at him conspiratorially.

Chuckling to himself, Peter ducked his head. It was times like these that Peter was glad May thought he’d just been in a car accident. Otherwise, he’d have to explain what happened to Harry. May would be upset for him, Peer knew.

Things were looking up for his ex, though, according to Betty. Now that SHIELD was able to find documentation to prove that the Hivemind was real, both Harry and Flash were no longer being treated as high threat prisoners. Instead, they were being recruited for projects within SHIELD to help ‘repay their debt in society’, a generous offer that wasn’t extended to neither Carlton nor Carnage. Especially not after Carnage almost escaped once, killing three SHIELD agents in the process.

Beck had also failed to secure a cushy deal. He’d been caught with his pants down in Madrid while on the run. SHIELD was currently in a threeway battle with international police agencies for who had the right to nail his carcass to the wall first. Contrary to his bombastic stories in class, Beck had left a long trail of damaged, robbed, conned, or outright murdered people across Europe. It was only the recent revelation of the  _ true _ nature of his Quirk that allowed the police to finally connect the dots. 

Point was, Harry and Flash were extremely lucky. Still, though, the impression he got from Betty was that Harry and Flash’s involvement was less than voluntary. Unlike hers, she was quick to point out. In fact, they were grooming her to be a full field agent at some point. Once she mastered her Quirk, that is.

(“I may have fibbed a bit about my control,” she said the last time they spoke. “It’s a huge commitment, and I still have to finish my own studies! They’re very pushy, you know.”)

Peter traced the outline of the design on the candy box, thinking. “Not sure… if I have anything to share.”

“MJ seems to think you do,” May teased. “She even gave me a name. Wanna try again?”

“The name is probably right, but I… I think I ruined things. That’s why… I don’t think I have anything to share.” When Peter ended this statement, his voice was very soft.

May didn’t say anything for a while. Then she reached out for his hand, holding it. “It feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it?” she said, her voice a little thick. “You think, here is a person I never want to hurt. Here is a heart I want to protect always.” She grimaced. “Then you do something terrible anyway. Say something. Break something.  _ Ruin something.  _ Bruise that precious heart of theirs on accident. Bruise it on purpose.” She shrugged. “What do you do then?”

“…I don’t know,” Peter said, defeated. May immediately swatted at him. “Hey!”

“You  _ apologize _ , Peter. Damn, who raised you.” Glowering, May turned her attention back to the road. “You apologize. You admit what you did. You talk that shit out. And you do better next time. And if they decide next time isn’t in the cards, you respect that, and you move on. It’s basic respect. Relationships 101. Don’t tell nobody I never taught you anything.”

“Damn, okay,” Peter muttered.

“Don’t  _ okay _ me,” May said, imitating his voice. He did not sound that absurd. “Commit to it. Reach out! Do it today!” She tapped on the box. “In fact, give them that as a belated gift. Take the discount tag off first, though.”

“I know that,” Peter said, embarrassed.

“Good. Just making sure.” May beamed at him, all smiles now that she’d felt she had helped him.

Peter looked down at the candy box again. He hoped she was right.

-

May knew well of his procrastinator spirit. When they got home, she stopped in the doorway, made sure he had money in his pocket, and turned him away. Peter had to talk to Wade today, no matter what.

But how? His main mode of reaching Wade had been crushed to smithereens, and they still did not have enough money to replace it. He’d tried calling Wade’s agency once or twice from May’s landline, but the calls never went through. A few weeks back, he happened to pass by the bar where he and Wade had met. Not only had Wade not been there, but Weasel had also been less than helpful.

Peter had one last option available to him. Dreading a one-on-one conversation, he’d avoided this one for weeks. But of all the options, this one was the least challenging of the bunch.

All he had to do was show up in Wade’s front door.

So that’s exactly what Peter did.

And he got a gun in his face for his efforts.

-

Wrong footed, Peter stared death down the barrel for what felt like an eternity.

In reality, it was for a handful seconds, which was all of the time Dom needed to recognize he wasn’t a threat. She dropped the weapon.

“Baby Hero!” she said, greeting him cheerfully. Dom looked banged up. Her cheek was a purple mess, and her arm was in a sling. “So weird to see you. Small world, etc.” She leaned against the entryway. “Are you a door-to-door candy salesman? That’s not safe, buddy.”

Peter couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him. He was still stunned at her presence. “I- Wade?” He’d never seen her here before.

“Dom,” she said, pointing at herself. She shot him a cheeky grin. “So. Let me guess. Wade’s been using this as a booty call crash pad, huh? I was wondering why it doesn’t look condemned anymore. I thought maybe Cable kicked his ass a bit while I was overseas. Too much to hope for, I guess.”

An elevator pinged somewhere down the hallway. Her eyes sharpened. Swinging the door almost shut, she backed up into the apartment again, watching the hallway from the open slit. Confused, Peter stayed in place, still stupidly holding onto the giant candy box.

When all the elevator revealed was an ancient man and his ancient dog walking in the opposite direction, Dom opened up the door again with a gusty sigh. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but this is one of our safe houses. That’s why I’m here.  _ To be safe. _ Bad guys don’t like you stealing their shit after all, even when they were the one who stole it first.”

So that was it, huh? Peter’s last thread of a connection with Wade. Severed.

This wasn’t where Wade lived. This wasn’t how he could contact Wade again. And Wade himself had made no efforts to contact him in return.

It was like May said. Wade had decided that next time wasn’t in the cards after all.

Peter’s eyes burned. “This was a bad idea,” he whispered, backing up. He smiled woodenly at Dom. “Sorry to bother you. Hope you feel better soon.”

He quickly turned and walked off towards the elevator.

“Wait. Baby Hero!” Dom called out to him, confused. Peter didn’t turn around.

Peter kept walking and kept moving and kept pressing forward until he’d made it home. He tossed the candy box and braced himself on a chair, trying to convince himself that a broken heart wasn’t actually as suffocating as it felt.

At the sound of him returning, May called out to him. Smiling, she entered the room to greet him. Then her eyes fell to the candy box Peter dropped on the counter. “Oh,” May said sadly.

Unable to take her pity, Peter went to his room and closed the door.

-

It was almost March when Peter realized he had a stalker.

Things were just about back to normal. School was going well. Preparations for the licensing exams were in full swing. He’d even picked up his old job again, and, boy, was Robbie a breath of fresh air compared to Jameson.

Everything had a routine now. By day, Peter was a student and a part-time photographer for the Daily Bugle. By night, Peter fought crime. He kept these things strictly compartmentalized. No reason to shout from the rooftops who he was, he figured.

So there was no reason for a man to be following him during the day, especially not someone like Nathan Summers.

Peter endured it for two days, pretending ignorance. Then, as he headed out for lunch, he caught a glimpse of Cable glowering at him across the street, and it all just struck him as super weird and creepy. Annoyed, Peter turned, intending to tell Cable just that.

But direct eye contact with the man was a hell of a lot scarier than the nebulous image of a reflection. Peter was immediately cowed—and worse, he no longer had the defense of ignorance.

Cable walked off, holding eye contact with an intensity that said Peter was going to get knifed in his sleep. Or, more realistically, that Nathan wanted Peter to follow him somewhere.

So, dreading it, Peter did.

The two of them walked down the street until they hit a small, abandoned park set in the shadow of an old residential building. Cable pushed open the rickety gate with a force that said it would have happened regardless if there was a lock on it or not. He ignored the grown over basketball courts, instead making his way to one of the aged benches overlooking a sand pit. Hands deep in his pockets, Peter followed with a good six feet between them, his mind going a mile a minute.

Then Cable turned, sitting on one edge of the bench. He looked up at Peter. That’s when Peter remembered that the man in front of him wasn’t just a scary looking guy with weapons. He was also a freaking telepath.

Oh God. Peter needed to think about anything other than that dossier or the fact that Peter lied to Wade or the fact that they’d had sex or the fact that Peter was freaking  _ Spider-Man _ -

“Why is it,” Nathan said slowly, “that whenever someone comes across a telepath, they immediately start thinking of all the things they don’t want the telepath to know?” He scowled up at Peter. Then he jerked his head to the other side of the bench.

Peter obeyed, dropping down on it.

They sat there in silence for a full minute. All around them, horns were honked. Conversations were had. Songs were played. Even in this sad deserted park, irrefutable signs of humanity were endless.

“Do you know why I hate you?”

Feeling crushed, Peter didn’t answer.

“Wade has an agency,” Cable said. “His agency’s specialty is doing the things no one wants to do. And we do it well.”

It was interesting that he aligned himself with Deadpool Corps (or was it X-Force?) when all official documents said he didn’t exist at all, let alone as a Pro Hero.

Cable considered the sky quietly, squinting. “But to do it well, you gotta leave your doubts at the door. You gotta be a bit… amoral.” He turned to face Peter. “But ever since that idiot met you, you’re all he talks about. What would Peter think about this? Oh, Peter’s not going to like that. Peter. Peter.  _ Peter _ .” He scowled at Peter. “It’s a goddamn nightmare.”

When Cable kept scowling, like Peter needed to do something about this, Peter said, “Uh. Sorry?”

This did nothing to ease the lines of dislike on Cable’s face, but he pulled back slightly, as if satisfied. Then he clapped his knees. “That’s it. That’s the extent of my problem with you.”.

“I don’t understand how any of that is a problem, though?” Besides potentially being annoying, that is.

Cable looked at him. “You don’t?” The strange light coming out of his eye gleamed brighter than the sun reflecting off of a skyscraper at high noon. It was blinding. “You make him want to be a better man.”

Peter’s head ducked down. This was not the first time he’d heard of this. But he couldn’t help the burst of warm gushy feelings raced through him, especially since the last encounter of the Wade kind left him feeling so… raw. And wrong.

“Ugh.” Cable sounded grossed out. He turned. “It’s better if I don’t look at you.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut up,” Cable retorted. “If Wade wants to be more of a traditional Hero, I’m fine with it. We—the whole crew—are fine with it. Many of them are  _ more _ than fine with it. We’re open to changing with him. But…” Cable hesitated. “But he wants to be better  _ because  _ of you. So if you’re going to be in his life, don’t pull this wishy washy ghosting bullshit. Be a part of his life or go the fuck away so he can get over you.” Cable nodded once to himself, then stood. “And that’s all I gotta say about it. I’m not a damn relationship counselor.”

His piece said, Cable started to leave.

But, seeing a ray of hope in his disgruntled stalker, Peter wasn’t quite ready for him to go. He hastily stood up. “Wait!” he called out. “Um. Thanks for all that, but, uh… would you happen to know where he is?”

Cable stopped mid-step at this, then swung back to face Peter. His expression was extremely complicated to read—and what Peter could read wasn’t good.

Feeling exposed, Peter let out an embarrassed chuckle, cupping the back of his neck. “I only have one address for him… and it’s a safe house. Apparently? And, um, your agency’s voicemail is full? Also, I lost his phone number, and we never exchanged emails. He hasn’t reached out to  _ me _ either, so I thought-” Peter’s face fell. Quieter, he said, “I thought-”

Peter didn’t need to finish his thought. Not with a telepath right in front of him.

Cable groaned, palming his entire face. “You don’t have his… he’s  _ moping _ and  _ pining _ , and you don’t even-”

He wasn’t annoyed anymore.

No.

Cable was  _ livid _ .

He stomped back over to Peter. “You’re both fucking dumbasses. You’re made for each other.” He reached into his pocket and yanked out a ring of keys. “I’ll tell you his address. I’ll do you one better. I’ll give you a copy of the key to his goddamn front door.” Eyes ablaze, he wrenched at the ring like he was going to turn his keys into metal art, then shoved one into Peter chest. “Make the fuck up, and  _ never speak to me again. _ ”

Peter caught his gift. He stared at the Hello Kitty printed key like it was the holy grail. He was willing to try again. If this worked, Nathan might be his new best friend.

“I resent that.”

-

It was a simple thing, showing up to someone’s home uninvited. Peter, of course, made it far more complicated.

He headed home, showered, and dressed. Then redressed and redressed again when he didn’t look right in the mirror. He tore out of May’s apartment and got halfway down the stairs before he realized his hair was wet and likely to poof without product—and, stupidly, he wanted to look good. Especially if there was any chance Wade was on the fence about this.

Freaking out, he stomped back up to the apartment, fixed his hair, then left again—and then came back for a third time to pick up the old, untouched box of Valentine’s Day candy. Just to be safe. Wade could be bribed. Right?

On his way out, Peter got screamed at by a neighbor who claimed he sounded like a herd of elephants. Hurrying, Peter didn’t try to explain. “Sorry, sorry!”

Wade’s apartment—his real one—wasn’t anywhere in Manhattan. It was instead so far north in the Bronx, it was almost not even in New York City at all. Peter took his preferred mode of transportation—his webs—all the way there, one eye on May’s cell phone as he tried to navigate a part of New York City he wasn’t as familiar with.

Once his aunt’s GPS gave him a metaphorical thumbs up, Peter landed on a low roof, stepping off to drop into a windy ally. Once there, he pulled his mask off and tried to fix the damage he’d done to his hair. Then, consulting his phone again, Peter drew in all of his courage and marched over to Wade’s building, heading up to his apartment.

The next time Peter hesitated, he was already turning the key in Wade’s door. He allowed himself a second to gulp down nervousness, then he pushed into the apartment.

“Hey, Wade, it’s me,” Peter said, half-crouched. “Don’t shoot.”

His warning was for nothing; the apartment was dark. It was mostly dark—and, yes, almost as much of a mess as Wade’s safe house but in a different way. Instead, it looked grungy, it looked disused. The plastic had never come off of the couch after it was dropped off. Now, it was yellowed with age. A thick layer of dust covered everything except the kitchen, and the windows were cloudy and dark, in need of some TLC.

The big mounted television itself had a huge patch of dead pixels on the side. But it was indeed on, flashing a screensaver for Netflix. That, the unrotten tomatoes on the counter, and the pot of (yes) salted water on the stove, made Peter think he’d just missed Wade in the middle of prep for dinner.

He gingerly sat on the couch, running through multiple strategies at a time. He had one shot to make this work. Probably.

About twenty minutes later, a key scratched around in the lock. Peter shot up to full attention, not that he’d ever relaxed. What had seemed like a great idea with Cable now seemed like a horrible invasion, a violation of privacy, and an instant way to make Wade hate him forever.

He barreled on anyway, heading towards the door.

“Long time no see,” Peter was saying as the door opened. Wade froze, his arms heavy with groceries. He was hidden by civilian clothes, his usual set of layers. He seemed stunned.

Swallowing, Peter stepped into the entryway, looking up at him. “Um. I was in the hospital. For a while. And I lost my phone. So I didn’t have your number. Or any other contact info.”

Wade blinked at him slowly. Maybe Peter had missed a step? He was trying to explain why he hadn’t been in touch. Maybe he should have explained that first.  _ Wade, I’m not avoiding you. Please don’t be avoiding me too. _ How hard was that to say?

Peter was trembling.

“And your apartment isn’t actually your apartment,” Peter continued, unable to help a note of accusation in his voice.

Wade pulled down his medical mask with a hand still full of bags of groceries. “Well, technically, they’re all my apartments,” he said ironically.

_ His voice. _ God. Peter had missed his voice so much.

Frowning, Wade stepped into his apartment, and Peter backed up to let him. In hindsight, rushing a man in his doorway was not the way to apologize. “But when I went there, you were gone.” Peter swallowed, watching Wade drop the groceries on the counter. “And then… your agency’s voicemail was full, and that bartender guy at that place we met pretended not to speak English and-”

“And since your dorm is gone, I had no idea where you lived,” Wade said, continuing the narrative that they’d just lost contact with each other. A simple misunderstanding. Two ships passing in the night.

“Well. You had  _ some _ idea,” Peter countered rebelliously, remembering the file Wade had on him.

“Sure, but, like, only an address. Not… you know.” Wade heaved out a rough breath, then hissed, “ _ The knowledge you wanted to see me. _ ”

Wade had his back to Peter. He was haphazardly putting things away in his cupboards, not paying attention. Peter only knew this because milk didn’t go there. At least, not that kind of milk. At least, if you didn’t want it to go bad.

“But I do want to see you,” Peter said quietly. “I wanted to see you so bad.”

Wade twitched at that. He stopped, bracing his hands against the counter underneath his cupboards. Then he spun, expression calculating. “Bad enough to break into my apartment?”

“Is it breaking if I have a key?” Peter lifted it as evidence. Realizing this wasn’t helping his case, he said, “Um. Blame Cable for that.”

“Oh, I’m blaming Cable,” Wade said absently, eyes darting all over Peter. Whatever he saw in Peter’s face eased the intensity of his frown. He stepped around the obstacles in the kitchen, walking up to where Peter was still standing in the entryway. As an afterthought, he closed the front door. “So can I touch you or-”

Peter crowded up into him, wrapped his arms around his neck. Something loosened in Wade’s frame at this—and in Peter’s too.  _ Thank God. _ Wade scooped his arm underneath Peter and carried him deeper into the apartment, leaving his groceries behind. His free hand wedged between them, forcing Peter’s chin up.

And then they were  _ kissing _ . They were kissing fiercely enough to hurt, hard enough to bruise and ache, but all Peter felt was a burst of elation, like some missing piece had finally been found. He heated up instantly, hands moving all over Wade’s neck and head.

Now that Peter was obeying, Wade slid his hand free once more, using it to push up Peter’s back underneath his shirt, flattening over his spine possessively, pressing him tighter into the unyielding surface that was Wade’s own body.

Peter would do anything for Wade at this moment, he thought. Especially where this was going. And maybe that would be the end of it. Maybe if they were on the same page, they wouldn’t have to talk about everything that had happened. They could just move on. They could just be together, happy.

His hope died when he was placed gently on a chair. Wade kneeled down in front of him, hands on Peter’s legs.

“So. Those last couple of months sucked, huh.”

Ah. Crap. This was the awful part of Relationships 101, wasn’t it? And he couldn’t claim May never warned him.

Under Wade’s neutral gaze, Peter crumpled. He covered his face, sighing gustily. He forgot that, between the two of them, Wade was the one with the healthy relationship skills. Peter was the one who wanted to run away from this conversation.

Since Peter was hiding, Wade started first. “I want to be a better Hero for you, but I don’t think I’m capable.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Peter countered.

Wade looked exasperated. “Honey, last time we saw each other, I almost murdered your friend so the internet wouldn’t get hold of Carnage’s… what’s the murder-equivalent of dick pics?” He paused, pressing his fingers to his mouth. “Hm. Have I used that joke before? I might have.” His eyes narrowed. “Maybe in a previous edit.”

Peter would not be derailed. “But you didn’t. You did the right thing.”

Wade looked unhappy. “Maybe. Too little, too late.”

“Just enough and right on time,” Peter countered doggedly. “I’d be dead if it wasn't for you.”

Already, Peter had stepped into a minefield. There was a lot that could be said about that, and mostly about how Peter’s carelessness with his own life affected others. Peter could see it building up in Wade, that same anger he’d seen on the roof. It was still there, still festering.

But instead of letting Peter have it, Wade just sighed, hiding his face in Peter’s knees, and Peter let him. It was for the best, and probably the kindest thing he could do for them both.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, his stomach twisting with guilt. “I am. I mean it. I’ll… do better.  _ Be safer. _ I promise.”

“You’d better,” Wade said, his voice muffled.

They needed to have a longer conversation. There was so much left to do between them, so much left to repair. But for now, relief ruled the roost for the day, and Peter couldn’t help but fall into Wade and fold over him, wrapping his arms around every bit of Wade he could reach.

“Do you have anymore burning secrets?” Wade asked at length.

“Not that I know of,” Peter said. This whole mess had kind of blown all of his secrets vault sky high. “But if I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

“Really?” Wade was grimacing so hard, Peter could feel it against his shins. “Come on. Give me something to  _ earn _ .”

“But I don’t want to be a mystery to you.” Wade looked up at this. Was Peter not explaining this right? “I don’t want you to not know things about me. I don’t want you to second guess what you mean to me.”

Wade’s face broke out into a smile. “Oh, Petey. I always knew you liked me. What I’m more worried about right now is the fact that you don’t like yourself.”

Peter flinched at that unexpected jab. Was that true? Was that how people saw him? He didn’t hate himself, he just… didn’t put much value in his own life.

Aw. Crap. That was the same thing, wasn’t it?

Wade lifted his head completely. He observed Peter for a long moment before saying, “But that’s a problem for a different time.”

Smiling slyly now, he caught one of Peter’s hands, pulling him off the chair. He continued pulling Peter for a few steps, swinging his arm playfully. “So what is your Quirk? It’s not sticky hands and situational anxiety, you flippant little shit.”

“Oh, so now earning things is off the table, huh?”

Wade pouted at him.

Shaking his head, Peter shrugged off Wade’s grip. He flipped up to the ceiling. He stuck there with his feet for a second, then shot a line of web between them. Using the web, he dropped down with gravity, swaying slightly in the air. Like this, he was upside down but face to face with Wade.

This was nothing compared to the stuff Wade had already seen of him while in his spidery persona. There was no reason for Wade to be excited.

But he was, and it was infectious. At Wade’s fascinated, wide-eyed expression, Peter grinned.

After a moment, Wade smiled back at him warmly, the expression a little helpless and a little fond. He reached out and palmed Peter’s cheek, arranging him just so and-

Huh. Kissing from this angle was nicer than he expected it to be. Hanging free, Peter had zero leverage except for what Wade was offering—and Wade was offering a lot. He was getting a little lightheaded, even, and he never got lightheaded when he was upside down like this.

Wade pulled back after a moment, eyes heated. “Nice callback. But you never answered my question.”

What were questions? What were words? Peter struggled to get his thoughts back in line.

“Uh, I’m a spider. Duh.” Peter licked his lips. Then, abruptly eager to share, he said, “It’s an inherited thing. Bugs, you know. Have you seen pictures of my mom? She’s a bug too. Her whole family are bugs.”

“Bugs, huh…” Wade said, thinking. “Isn’t a spider an arachnid?”

Scowling at this reminder, Peter pointed at his nose. “Don’t you even start.” Peter had enough of that when trying to make sense of his Quirk himself, thank you!

But what he didn’t have enough of was the endearing way Wade threw his head back to laugh.

That, he needed more of.

Lots more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Please give Bamf a lot of love on the art post here: https://amazing-spiderling.tumblr.com/post/644400678040666112/spideypool-big-band-2020-art-masterpost-title


End file.
